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Headlines are an important element of your website or blog. But headlines are not just a key factor for getting found by search engines. They provide important information for website visitors, who should be your main audience.
1. Headlines offer a way for visitors to more easily scan and navigate your content.
You’ve probably heard that fewer people like to or have time to read much any more. So, it’s up to marketers to make scanning website pages easier. One way to do this is to use different levels of headlines (H1, H2, H3 and more) to break up text and show your site visitors how you’ve organized your blog post or page content at a glance.
2. Creative headlines grab the visitor more quickly than big blocks of text.
According to Brian Clark, Founder of Copyblogger, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. Using numbers in headlines increases visits to and time spent on the page (perhaps because people know exactly how much information they will get?). Catchy and clever headlines make a difference, especially on blog posts.
4. Headlines do help the search engines index the content on your site.
The search engines use headlines for efficient indexing of relevant content on your site. But recent changes to the Google algorithm mean that Google places less emphasis on headlines. Bing weighs headlines more heavily and Yahoo recognizes them as well.
Do you have compelling headlines on your site? If you need help writing great headlines and organizing your website content, contact New Incite today. We’ve created, updated, and written content and great headlines for hundreds of websites since 1998.
