Writing totally original article titles that get the click can be very difficult at times. Fortunately, however, there are some shortcuts that can help you write powerful headlines for your articles.
The easiest way to start writing great article titles is to copy the best professionals in your niche and tailor your title to your article. How do you do that? There are several sources of this type of inspiration:
1. Go to Yahoo News, MSN News, or Google News and search for the keyword your article is targeting. Take some of your article headlines and input your topic information and see how you feel about it. These three run extensive tests to see how much their headlines are clicked on. Their headline writers are true professionals. Copy their headlines and replace their subject with the subject of your specific article.
2. Go to YouTube and enter your keyword. You will find some good ideas there. Find the video with the most views. People don’t click on videos unless the title catches their eye. Since these are videos, not articles, you may be able to use the popular video title as the title of your article and no one will care.
3. You can also go to Amazon.com, indigo.com, and other book-selling sites. Browse the titles of best-selling books, eBooks, DVDs, and CDs. Base your article on the main titles and create a headline from the title, if applicable.
4. Magazines.com and other magazine sites can be a good source of article headlines that you can get from the front pages they display for trade magazines.
5. Magazine directories from Yahoo, MSN, Google and others can be a great source of headline ideas.
6. Then there are specific magazines that are known for their big headlines like The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, National Enquirer, World News, Wall Street Journal, Forbes and others. Search for the best magazines in your niche and tailor their stories and headlines to your article.
7. Be sure to look at niche specific magazines by typing your niche + directory or niche + magazines into Google and look at the results.
8. Don’t forget your niche newsletters. Run a search for any of the ideas above and replace the word magazines with newsletters. There are many paid and free newsletters out there that have some really great article headlines and topics.
9. Next, you can look at the Google AdWords ads that you’ll find on the right hand side of any Google search page. These are paid ads so you know people are doing their best in the headlines. However, be careful with these ads. Many people do not know what they are doing. Watch top AdWords ads for several days, if not several weeks. If you find that an ad repeats itself over time, it’s probably getting a lot of clicks.
10. Google AdWords ads are another really good source of inspiration if you click on the ad and look at the headlines they are using in their sales letters, on the website, landing page, menu items, etc. Google ranks AdWords ads in order of popularity from top to bottom so you know that the first few ads are the ones people click on the most. Be careful here because it is possible to buy the first position by paying more. On the other hand, if an ad stays at the top for a long period of time, it must be working or they would get tired of paying big bucks for something that doesn’t sell.
11. The last but certainly not the least source of good ideas is social networking sites. Look at sites like Digg.com, propeller, and others to see which people rate as the best. Find out which ones get the most views, likes, and other ways to express popularity. You will find some great ideas there!
I hope that helps you get going and that you find some great inspiration to write article titles that get the click.
