How to Write Strong Headlines

What print media aim to achieve with you, the internet wants too — to hold your attention, twice over. Because it's not just users, but Google too, that wants to be won over by short, punchy headlines. In short: welcome to organic search, SEO — aka the discipline of disciplines.

If you want to rank at the top, there's no getting around SEO. The formula for search engine optimisation goes: you fill your website with topic-relevant content, the user finds the best results for their search query, which matches your offer, and clicks your link. Watching closely is Google — and it rewards you with a higher position in the results, the ranking, because you help support the business model of the world's biggest search engine: fast search, optimal solutions. A theory that's music to our ears. But practice can be tough: content is still king! Here's how to get your content SEO-optimised into the World Wide Web.

The Most Important Point on the List: Crown Your King!

You're itching to get started — writers can feel it. BUT — slow down. It won't help to jump straight into writing the most creative or witty headlines. Back to square one: put on your thinking cap, make a plan, and ask yourself: what do I want to say? It may sound trivial, but it's still the single most important foundation of content creation. What good is a strong headline if the content is soft as cotton wool? Goals, structure and the right keywords are what earn a headline the label 'strong'. Yes, I know, another marketing buzzword! But here too, the exact meaning fits the context: so-called keywords connect a user's search query with your website — best of all when those keywords also appear in your website's texts (Google loves that most of all!). How to find those needles in the media haystack is a question everyone asks. Thankfully, many developers have made it their mission and built useful tools.

You're Not Alone With Keywords — the Best SEO Tools for Your Content

A golden rule in journalism when it comes to headlines: keep it short and simple. They're called headlines for a reason — attention should be won in a single strike. In the online world, this works best when keywords show up right in those headlines. But endlessly researching which keywords are searched most often — that's so 90s! With helpful SEO tools, that to-do can be done in the blink of an eye. Here are our top 4!

SEM-Rush

For anyone who wants all their online marketing activity on one dashboard and wants to pull comprehensive reports, SEM-Rush is the right choice. From content marketing and advertising to social media, market research and SEO, SEM-Rush gets our marketing hearts racing. Want to know how well your content's keywords are ranking? The subscription tool tells you. And even better: it also suggests SEO improvements in the form of text and keywords to help you stand out from the competition. Put the recommendations into practice, and you can see directly through the analytics how it affects your search engine position!

Sistrix

Welcome to SEO wonderland with Sistrix! This paid tool analyses every technical detail of your website that others overlook. Domains, your subpages' URLs, keywords, ranking, traffic (in other words: how many users are on your website, how often, and for how long), competition — Sistrix examines it all. Even the quality of your backlinks (the links to other websites built into yours) and, of course, your visibility index on Google, are summarised for you in one dashboard. Also included: a collection of performance-driven keyword ideas based on your business focus — great inspiration for your content!

A typical writing process: you draft your texts, proofread them, and then loop in someone else. But before you publish the content online, there's another helper ready to give it a thorough analysis. This little helper is called Surferseo, and it's THE tool for SEO-optimising your content. You log in, paste in your text, and within seconds it's checked precisely for keywords, visibility and structure. The barometer immediately shows you the SEO quality, and while editing you can see which adjustments raise your score! The tool comes in four subscription tiers — so month by month you can decide which package you need!

Google Ads

Yes, you read that right — whether or not you're planning ad campaigns, the keyword research tool built into Google Ads is always there for you, and free to use. Just create an account and start researching! It's perfect for getting started too, without having to invest money in deeper tools right away. Especially when planning website content, Google works as an ideal source of ideas, analysing the competition for you.

Practice Makes Perfect — Get to Work on Your Headlines!

Reassuring to know you're not entirely alone facing the SEO mountain, isn't it? With that certainty and these options in mind, it's your turn again. You've created strong content — now it's time to sum it up in a punchy headline. It has to be creative. To the point. Maybe even witty? So many questions! BUT: don't stress if the spark of inspiration doesn't come right away. A headline needs to develop. So start slowly with a working title and summarise your content in one sentence. It might be long, but that doesn't matter. One article, one sentence. Then run it through the funnel to end up with a perfectly filtered headline. Never forget: the journey is the destination!

Anything That Doesn't Help Your Ranking Has to Go

You'll know the feeling: once you've finished the piece, you emerge from the depths of writing and drafting. As a result, we usually describe our content in a very long working title. That's normal — but then it's time to pause, grab the imaginary red pen, and focus on the essentials: filter out the keywords! Anything that describes your content poetically has to go. Mark the focus words that sum up your text. Take a recipe for a summery watermelon salad as an example. The working title might be: In this text I describe the recipe for how to quickly and easily prepare a watermelon salad that's perfect for barbecues and picnics on warm summer days. These would be your filtered-out terms: In this text I describe the recipe for how to quickly and easily prepare a watermelon salad that's perfect for barbecues and picnics on warm summer days. Not that hard, right? If you hesitate, just imagine you were searching for exactly this recipe online — what's better than a delicious salad you can whip up quickly? Exactly, pretty much nothing!

Time for the Final Touches

So far so good. But now let's polish things up a bit for the grand finale. This is where the fun begins, because there are countless ways to write your SEO-based headline. All you need to remember is to keep it short and offer the user real value right away. At this point you need to convince them your content delivers the best solution. Remember: keep it short and simple, but with small upgrades — work in numbers, questions, or play with lists.

Here are a few examples for the watermelon salad:

Quick and Easy — the Summer Recipe for the Perfect Watermelon Salad

Summer Is Calling — the Perfect Watermelon Salad in Just 4 Steps

Your Watermelon Salad for Summer — Here's How, Quick and Easy

The Perfect Watermelon Salad? Here's How, Quick and Easy!

For Summer Barbecues and Picnics — the Easy Watermelon Salad Recipe!

You could go on like this forever! But in the end, it's your gut feeling that decides — and the last step in the creative process is done: choosing your strong headline.

A fully digitalised work and private life, countless forms of advertising, media overload, ever-growing competition: online marketing has become a vast sea where it can sometimes be hard to stay afloat. We at codafish understand that, and offer our support wherever you need it. Because even if you've become a professional headline writer in the last 5 minutes, the range of SEO tools is huge and proper SEO screening takes effort. codafish is here to advise you: with our SEO package, we analyse your activities especially from a technical angle, so your website's foundation is set up for optimal ranking. For companies looking to noticeably improve their results, we can also carry out detailed audits, prepared by our external SEO experts. We carry out optimisations and deliver detailed reports for analysis. Get in touch with us. We identify your company's needs and put together a tailored service proposal to match your requirements and goals.