I’m often amazed at the amount of energy writers put into perfecting the sentence structure in the fourth paragraph of their piece when those same folks toss off a headline in the 17 seconds before happy hour on a Friday afternoon.

The sad truth is, most of your readers will never read the fourth paragraph of your brilliant copy. But many more will read your display copy.

Here’s why:

1. They’re not reading; they’re looking.

Back in the day, web-usability guru Jakob Nielsen wrote one of the first articles on writing for the web. The headline:

How users read on the web

The first paragraph:

They don’t.

“People read paper,” writes T.J. Larkin, principal of Larkin Communications. “They use the web.”

Indeed, 96% of the time people visit your website, they’re looking for something specific, according to a Xerox PARC critical incident study.

They:

• Collect 71% of the time. They’re gathering multiple pieces of information — researching a webinar or blog post, maybe, or trying to find the best refrigerator for their tiny house.
• Find 25%. They’re looking for a specific piece of information, such as the address of a restaurant.
• Explore 2%. We used to call this surfing, or just browsing around the web.
• Monitor 2%. They might return to BBC.com, for instance, to keep up with the latest news.

That makes searching for information the No. 2 mobile task, according to Raluca Budiu and Jakob Nielsen, in User Experience for Mobile Applications and Websites. (No. 1 mobile task: killing time.)

What they’re not doing: reading. In fact, 79% of web visitors scan, according to Sun Microsystems research. Just 16% read word-by-word.

2. They don’t spend much time on your message.

One way we know they’re not reading: They don’t spend enough time with your message to read it.

How much time do they spend?

The average web page visit lasts a little less than a minute, according to 2011 research by the Nielsen Norman Group. (Often, visits last only 10-20 seconds.) That’s enough time, Nielsen figures, to read about 25% of each page.

“People spend less than a minute on content pages,” Nielsen writes, “even when they’re looking at long articles or detailed product specs.”

That’s the good news.

Make that 15 seconds. Some 55% of web visitors spent fewer than 15 seconds on the web pages they visited, according to a 2014 Chartbeat analysis of 2 billion visits across the web.

Filter purely for blog posts or article pages, and “only” 33% of web visitors spend less than 15 seconds on a page.

Figuring that people read about 200 words per minute, at 15 seconds per visit, that’s about 50 words per web page.

Make that 20% of the words on the page, according to research by four professors from two German universities. For the study, the professors fitted 25 European computer scientists, psychologists, sociologists, engineers and other highly educated professionals with eyetracking devices to use while they went about their daily lives.

They collected 50,000 page views, which were then analyzed by the Nielsen Norman Group. From that analysis NNG found that:

• On average, web visitors read half the information on web pages with 111 words or less.
• As the word count goes up, so too does the amount of time visitors spend on a page. But reading time doesn’t keep up with the additional word count. Web visitors spend only 4.4 seconds more for each additional 100 words. Assuming an average reading time of 200 words per minute, that’s only about 15% of the additional words.
• Web visitors spent enough time to read at most 28% of the words on a web page during an average visit. However, Nielsen says, they don’t spend all that time reading. It’s more likely, he estimates, that visitors read only 20% of the words on the average web page.

How much of your message are they really reading?

3. Their eyes are drawn to display copy

So which words are they reading?

People read the display copy. Eyes are drawn to:

• Headlines
• Decks
• Subheads
• Captions
• Callouts
• Links
• Lists
• Highlighted key words

That’s right. Most of the impact you make on your readers comes, not from the paragraphs itself, but from the display copy.

People look first at photos, headlines and links. Online, readers look at directional devices, such as navigational bars, links and teasers, first, according to The Poynter Institute’s Eyetrack07 study.

Readers of broadsheets (such as The New York Times) look at headlines first. Readers of tabloids (such as the New York Daily News) look at photos first.

Note what doesn’t make the list: Paragraphs.

How are using these primary entry points to pull readers into your message?

Display copy draws eyes in print. Here’s what readers “process,” or see, in print, according to “Eyes On the News,” a study by The Poynter Institute:

• Artwork: 80%
• Photos: 75%
• Headlines: 56%
• Briefs: 31%
• Captions: 29%
• Text: 25% (This number is actually high, the researchers said, because testing prototypes produce better numbers than real publications.)

There’s no doubt about it: The biggest ROI you’re going to get on your writing time and effort in any medium is the work you put into your display copy.

Make the most of your display copy.

With well-written display copy, you can:

• Draw readers in by pointing out interesting facts that can transform flippers and skimmers into readers.
• Break copy up, making it look easier to read. And the easier it looks to read, the more likely people will read it.
• Communicate to nonreaders by lifting your ideas off the page or screen.
• Help readers remember. Average students remember more from reading pieces that include “signaling” devices like display copy than from those that don’t, found reading researcher Bonnie J. F. Meyer in a 1979 study. Use this display copy superpower to cement your ideas in your readers’ heads, as well.

Do you have a system for reaching nonreaders with display copy? If not, how are you reaching the 79% of your visitors who don’t read paragraphs?

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Who writes the world’s best web heads?

The folks at BBC News, according to usability expert Jakob Nielsen. Nielsen points to these effective headlines:

Italy buries first quake victims

Romania blamed over Moldova riots

Iran accuses journalist of spying

Ten arrested in UK anti-terrorism raids

Villagers hurt in West Bank clash

Mass Thai protest over leadership

“Around the world in 38 words,” Nielsen says.

How can you write great headlines like the BBC’s? Make sure your blog-post, content-marketing, social-media and other digital-marketing headlines are:

1. Context-free.

Microcontent moves: Web headlines are likely to show up alone in indexes, on social media and in search engine results.

“If there is a choice between boring and useless, I suggest going for boring.”

— Steffen Fjaervik, contributing writer for Poynter Online

That means your headlines and other online display copy — aka microcontent — must be clear regardless of whether the reader sees them within the context of the original page.

Take this headline:

On the move

In print, readers would get a clue about what that means from, say, mugshots of successful employees, images of a moving van or a picture of a shiny new skyscraper. But on a Google search results page or another index, readers might not be able to figure out whether this piece of content is:

• A story about employee promotions
• A piece on your company’s relocation benefits
• Or an article about the new headquarters building

Can readers understand your headlines — without the supporting text, illustrations and other microcontent that appeared on the original web page? If they can’t tell, chances are, they won’t click.

Good microcontent is easy to understand wherever it shows up, in or out of context. So write web headlines that are ready to move.

2. Clear.

One job of the headline is to get web visitors to read your web page. But even the most catchy headline rarely gets that job done.

That’s because few web visitors read online paragraphs in detail. Mostly, web visitors skim and scan the headlines and other display copy. So if you want them to know something, put it in the display copy.

So tell the story — don’t tell about the story — in the headline.

Some types of headlines tell about the story. Here’s one:

Moves and milestones

Who’s moving? What milestones?

This headline tells the story:

Phil Smith named product manager, Program Development

This online business headline tells about the story:

Benefits changes announced

What’s changed?

This headline tells the story:

Hallmark doubles profit sharing contribution

This headline tells about the story:

 New survey tracks industry trends

What did you learn in the survey?

This headline tells the story:

More communicators measuring ROI, survey says

3. Not clever.

I love clever headlines in print. But funny headlines don’t work well online.

Why? See context-free, above. And because Google never laughs.

Instead, make your headlines and other microcontent explanatory.

One huge telecomm company’s website features marketing headlines such as:

Openness — the road to success

(a conference)

A sign of attitude

(cool phones)

Change your perspectives

( IT jobs)

If you’re writing about conferences, phones and jobs, the words conference, phone and job should appear in good headlines.

“If the story is about the dangers of salmonella in tomatoes in California, by golly, the headline probably needs to have California, bacteria and tomatoes in it,” writes Sara Dickenson Quinn, visual journalism guru at The Poynter Institute.

“Maybe salmonella, too.”

The point here is to communicate, not to intrigue. So strive for clarity instead of creativity. Help visitors find what they’re looking for with headlines that explain rather than entertain.

As the BBC writes: Italy buries first quake victims. Any questions?

4. Front-loaded.

When viewing a list of articles on a search engine results page or an index page, web visitors spend less than one second looking at headlines. That’s according to Eyetrack III, a study of online behavior by The Poynter Institute.

So focus on the front, or on the first 2 words — 11 characters — of the headline.

To do so:

• Make it a mullet — business upfront, party in the back. Just slide the topic word to the front and put a colon after it.

  No (first 11 characters highlighted):

  Use drop-down menus sparingly

  Yes:

  Drop-down menus: Use sparingly

  Bonus: Adding a colon or hyphen to your headline can boost results by 9%, according to the Content Marketing Institute.

• Use numerals to say more with fewer characters.

  Instead of:

  First two words: A signal for the scanning eye

  Nielsen recommends that you make it:

  First 2 words: A signal for the scanning eye

  Remember, it’s long been AP style to use numerals for all numbers, even 1 through 9, in headlines.

  Bonus: 36% of people prefer list-based headlines, according to ConversionXL. So make numbers count.

  Oddly, list posts with odd numbers in the headlines outperformed those with even ones by 20%, according to the Content Marketing Institute. So 7 steps is better than 10 tips.

• Move your organization’s name to the end. Check your newsroom: When you scan the list of news release headlines and links, what’s the first word in each item?

  Is it the topic word? Or do you have a list of items that each begins “XYZ Organization announces …”

  No:

  Drake University campus life

  Yes:

  Campus life at Drake University

Front-load like the BBC. How do the BBC’s headlines stack up? Here are the first 2 words from each headline on Nielsen’s list:

Italy buries

Romania blamed

Ten arrested

Villagers hurt

Mass Thai

Iran accuses

Any questions?

5. Short.

Not everyone wants to play, “What’s the last word in the headline?” says Andy Bechtel, associate professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC-Chapel Hill.

So write web heads that don’t get truncated by Google, social media channels, mobile apps — or your reader’s attention.

Don’t get your head cut off by:

• To avoid having your headline truncated on search engine results pages, keep headlines to 55 characters or fewer. For SEO, Google prefers that you write headlines with at least 5 words.
• Social media. How will your headline look when it shows up on Facebook, Twitter and other social sharing sites? To avoid getting your head cut off on social media, aim for 55 characters or less.
• Mobile. Mobile apps and websites often truncate long headlines. To avoid getting your head cut off on mobile apps, follow the Associated Press’s guideline and limit headlines to fewer than 40 characters.
• Keep your web head to 8 words or fewer, or about 40 characters. That’s the length readers can understand at a glance, according to research by The American Press Institute. Bonus: Editing down your headline to 8 words can result in a 21% boost in clickthrough rates, according to the Content Marketing Institute.

But online, shorter’s better. My personal preference is for web heads of 6 words or less, or about 30 characters. The average BBC head that made Nielsen’s list weighs in at five words, or 34 characters.

However, note that headlines that work for blog posts tend to be longer, according to Hubspot. Once you write a great post, top it with a headline of 6 to 13 words for the most consistent boost in traffic and hits.

Consider BBC style

The BBC itself offers these suggestions for headlines that make readers feel compelled to click:

1. Write two headlines: a short one for search engine results pages and other indexes and a longer line for search engine optimization. No doubt about it: Google rules online headlines.
2. Think news style. Follow these do’s and don’ts:

• DO include a verb, most of the time: “Britain’s top policeman resigns.”
• DON’T use journalese: “Cave yields marsupial fossil haul.”
• DON’T be ambiguous: “Queen sells pirate music to fans”

3. Tell the story. “You need a short header that is factual and gives understanding,” writes BBC mobile editor Nathalie Malinarich. “Otherwise it just becomes click bait.”

Tweak those headlines.

I once talked to a VP of communications for Humana who asked his communicators to spend 90% of their time and effort on the headlines and other display copy and 10% on the paragraphs.

I’m not sure about the proportions, but I agree with the sentiment. The investment you make in polishing the headline will pay off: Headline tweaks can boost clicks by 10%, according to a study by MarketingExperiments.

As the great adman David Ogilvy wrote: “By the time you’ve written your headline, you’ve spent 90 cents of your advertising dollar.”

Are you investing it well?

____

Sources: “Writing for mobile: Bite-size basics,” BBC Academy, Dec. 2, 2014

“Writing for the web,” BBC Academy, July 2, 2013

Jakob Nielsen, “World’s Best Headlines: BBC News,” Alertbox, April 27, 2009 ^[1]

Jodi Harris, “Increase Content Marketing Success With Helpful Headline Tips & Tools,” Content Marketing Institute,  Aug. 18, 2015

Neil Patel, “5 Characteristics Of High Converting Headlines,” Conversion XL, July 8, 2014

Mimi An, “Compounding Blog Posts: What They Are and Why They Matter,” Hubspot, Jan. 28, 2016

Hi Lovers! Sorry, but we know nothing about dating profile headlines. We wish you the best with online dating and hope you are traveling the world with a new love on June 26, but we can’t help you with that. Thanks for looking!

The post Steal tricks from the world’s best online headlines appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

There’s a lot of sniveling and squawking going on in the web writing community these days. Consider the headlines:

• “This Boring Headline Is Written for Google,” grumble journalists.
• “Google doesn’t laugh,” moan headline writers.
• “Witty headlines: Black and white and dead all over,” kvetch communicators.

What’s all the bellyaching about? The fact that feature headlines don’t work so well online. Sad, but true: When it comes to web heads, it’s more important to optimize for search engines — and optimize for real people — than it is to be clever.

“Part of the craft of journalism for more than a century has been to think up clever titles and headlines,” writes Ed Canale, vice president for strategy and new media at The Sacramento Bee. “And Google comes along and says, ‘The heck with that.’”

“If there is a choice between boring and useless, I suggest going for boring.”

— Steffen Fjaervik, contributing writer for Poynter Online

Or, as Steffen Fjaervik, contributing writer for Poynter Online, suggests:

“If there is a choice between boring and useless, I suggest going for boring.”

But maybe those aren’t the only options.

Four ways to write creative headlines for the web

Here are three ways to work around the SEO and scanning restrictions of web heads:

1. Use your title tag and URL.

Your title tag gets more Google juice than your web headline. So put your literal headline in the title tag and put the feature headline on the content page. The New York Times, for instance, sometimes packs keywords into its title tags, but not into the page headline.

2. Use the deck.

You could also use the headline for the literal story, the deck for the creative or benefits-focused one.

• Literal headline: [Topic word] does what
• Benefits-oriented deck: You benefit how
• Creative deck: Clever wordplay or twist of phrase

3. Be witty and clear.

You’re brilliant, right? Why not write a headline that’s both creative and telling? The pros are pulling it off by writing:

a. A literal kicker with a clever headline. Corporate communicator Kevin Allen writes:

“Witty headlines: Black and white and dead all over”

b. A clever kicker with a literal headline. “a book review headline in The Guardian was topped with this headline:

And some smart editor at NPR wrote:

c. A topic word subject with a clever verb phrase. “A Wired copyeditor writes:

And a Kansas City Business Journal writer comes up with

4. A reversed mullet.

Put the business in the front, party in the back with headlines like this one, from CNN:

No, there’s no danger that readers will injure themselves in a laughing fit, but these writers do manage to make their headlines both literal and creative.

How to manage all of these headlines

So how do you handle content management with all of these headline options?

Ask the writers to provide headlines and other display copy or microntent and metadata with the stories. Writers understand the story best, after all, and this approach keeps the webmaster from frantically repurposing everything and the end of the process.

And if you are publishing and posting, include the print headline in the web metadata. Print readers will look up the story using the headline they saw in the publication.

Even if it’s not the headline you post on the content or index pages, they should be able to find what they’re looking for.
___

Sources: Andy Bechtel, “Writing Headlines for Digital and Mobile Media,” Poynter News University, Dec. 5, 2013

Kevin Allen, “Witty headlines: Black and white and dead all over (because of SEO),” Ragan’s PR Daily, May 13, 2011

Amy Gahran, “Smart Headlines: Beyond Shovelware,” PoynterOnline, March 3, 2011

Arthur S. Brisbane, “Glimpses of Online Journalism, From Inside and Out,” The New York Times, Dec. 25, 2010

“Writing Online Headlines: SEO and Beyond,” Poynter News University

Eric Ulken, “Writing Headlines for the web 2010,” Poynter University NewsU web course

Eric Ulken, “This headline not written for Google,” OJR: The Online Journalism Review, Oct. 20, 2009

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