Headline writing

The job of a headline

Confirming that the page answers the question the reader arrived with. That is the whole job, and a headline that does it plainly outperforms a memorable one on every business page we have measured.

The reader is deciding whether to invest the next thirty seconds. A headline that requires interpretation spends some of that budget before the page has earned any of it.

So write the headline last, once you know what the page actually says. Headlines written first tend to promise a page that was never written.

Why clever headlines fail here

A pun or a tease works when the reader is browsing for entertainment and has attention to spare. Somebody with a leaking roof has neither, and cleverness reads as a delay.

It also fails outside the page, where a search engine or an answer engine shows the headline with no context around it. A headline that only makes sense in context is unusable as a search result, a shared link or a line quoted in an answer.

The exception is a brand whose whole proposition is personality. That is a small share of businesses and most of the ones imitating it are not among them.

Shapes that work

The list below is what we use on business pages. None of it is a formula to fill in mechanically; each one is a way of naming the subject so a reader recognizes themselves.

• The problem, named as the reader would say it
• The service plus the place
• A direct question the reader is already asking
• What they will have at the end
• How to do the thing, stated plainly
• The decision they are weighing, both sides named
• The mistake they are trying to avoid

Use their words, not yours

Customers do not search for what your trade calls a thing. They search for what is wrong, in ordinary language, and a headline in trade vocabulary misses them even when the page would have helped.

Take the wording from real enquiries. The phrases in your inbox are the phrases people use, and they are more reliable than anything produced at a desk.

Our page on search intent covers the wider point. Matching the reader's language is how a page gets found as well as how it gets read.

Headline, title and the main heading

These are three related things and they are not identical. The page title is what appears in a search result; the main heading is what a visitor sees on arrival. Both should say the same thing in a way suited to where they appear.

Keep them close enough that a visitor arriving from a search result recognizes the page. A mismatch is a small jolt that costs a measurable share of arrivals.

Our page on title tags covers the search-result half, including why length matters there and does not on the page itself.

Section headings are headlines too

Every heading inside a page is doing the same job at a smaller scale: telling a scanner what is in this part. The same rules apply and they are broken more often here.

A reader scanning a page reads the headings and little else. Ones that name their subject let somebody find what they need; ones that tease make them leave.

Our page on writing for the web covers scanning behavior in detail, which is what makes section headings worth this much attention.

Testing a headline

Show it to somebody with no context and ask what the page is about. If they cannot tell you, the headline has failed regardless of how it reads to you.

Then check it works alone. A headline that needs the image beside it, or the sentence beneath it, will not survive being quoted, shared or listed in a result.

And read it as a search result. That is where most people meet it first, and a headline that works on the page and not in a list is only doing half its job.