Making a strong first impression – on readers and search bots

A post's headline and generally its first 25 words appear in search indexes, as well as on subscription feeds, aggregator sites and social-media links. Seed this canvas with the strongest material possible: news angles, dynamic prose, original reporting, etc. It's the bait on your hook.

Subscribers and regular readers aside, winning attention can be even more challenging online than in print. Someone perusing, say, a hard copy of Nutcracker Collector Monthly or Wise Widgeter Digest already has enough interest in a topic to seek out a publication on it (or pick one off the doctor's waiting room table). The audience self-selects to a great degree and often pays money for the privilege, upping its stake in consumption of that media. So magazine and newspaper writers often preach to the choir.

Fishers on the ocean of free Internet content need to be more crafty.

As we discussed last week, search engines send spider bots to crawl the web, analyzing domain names, keywords, inbound and outbound links, and 190-something other mysterious factors to determine a page's point ... and also its authority, called PageRank in the Googleverse. Various techniques exist to boost SEO (search engine optimization).

The higher your PageRank, the higher your site appears when people search. And if your first impression is compelling, they click through and read. The same goes for folks perusing feeds, Facebook links or fecklessly skimming spamtastic linkfarms.

Wow 'em. Hard and fast.

For the bots, touch upon keywords – the terms that really sum up the gist of a post. Don't stuff them in, but if you're reviewing the Big Book of Biscuits, don't lead with 250 words on your grandfather's favorite cookie-making apron. That's called "burying the lede" in media jargon.

People-wise, be precise and colorful, emphasizing the original (language and material). Avoid word repetition between the headline and first paragraph. Those 35-ish words together are the post's ambassador and advert alike. Make every one count.

SEO starter-kit – Master the headline

Post frequency is a huge factor in your site's ranking, which determines how high it appears on search engine indexes. Naturally, prominence there builds readership. In week six, we'll explore nuances of this voodoo, called search engine optimization (SEO). But for now, let's focus on a few simple steps to juice up your blogs:

• Write early. Write often. Unlike your instructors' personal blogs. (Do as we say...)
• Shorter linked entries – published daily – are preferable to a long essay weekly.
• Kick off with enticing language, rich with specifics – especially the keywords folks might search upon. Soup up those headlines!
• Ditto the first 25 words, which also appear on the search engine's index pages. Make 'em count.

“On a value-per-word basis, headline writing is the most important writing you do, explains Jakob Nielsen of Weblog Usability. “Descriptive headlines are especially important for representing your weblog in search engines, newsfeeds (RSS), and other external environments. In those contexts, users often see only the headline and use it to determine whether to click into the full posting.”

One-deck headlines are preferable. Employ precise language – or poetic, if that's more your thing. But think about baiting readers away from their tax returns, tennis matches and the latest Tina Fey vehicle.

Some of the best headlines spring fully-formed from the ether. But certain formulas exist for less inspired moments. As the travel-writing teacher Louise Purwin Zobel points out: "Everybody likes a title that talks about saving money or time; a title that promises improvement in health, creativity, or prestige; a title that hints of the newest, the latest, the most up to date; a title that tells you the article will tell you how to do something. You – either spelled out or implied – is a very important word. The title should be intriguing, startling, or thought-provoking and usually no longer than six words."

Engaging headlines ask a question, use clever punctuation, alliteration, a pun, or onomatopoeia, advises Poynter's Sara Quinn.

Oh, behave, with your bad headline self!

1. Search for action, rather than verbs of being (is, has, was).
2. Avoid word repetition: The worse headline I've ever personally witnessed: Town Plan Planning Gets Go Ahead.
3. Be descriptive. A header hooks the reader. Don't "bait and switch" with a misleading statement in 48-point type.
4. Omit unnecessary words like prepositions, helping verbs (is, are) or articles (a, an, the).
5. Strive for words that are short, common, colorful, powerful, specific.

As David Michelmore, a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editor, notes: "Heads are a little like poetry. (Not a lot, but a little.) There's no room for extraneous words. The formats are uncompromising. How they sound counts. How they look counts. And getting just the right word is what makes them fun."

Good uns

• Pictures from Die Hunns and Black Halos show
• Office Depot Pays United States $4.75 Million to Resolve False Claims Act Allegations (too long, but even if you only read the first few words,
• you have an idea of what it's about)
• Ice cream trucks as church marketing

Cruddy headlines
Vague and bland, poor captions don't express the story or its urgency. They're unlikely to rank high on search-engines or to inspire clicks when they do. Cases in point:

• What Is It That You Want?
• Hey, kids! Comics!
• Victims Abandoned

Gotcha!
Fake-out headlines promise one thing (usually sex, drugs and rock and roll), then deliver another (death, taxes). While this can result in a bunch of click-throughs, temporarily spiking traffic, it doesn't build a solid readership. Still, sometimes writers just can't help themselves...

• It may not boost your libido or take cellulite off your thighs, but… (about the latest issue of Serendipity) –Tamara’s Big Blog of Marvel
• Fat Tits (about birds) – Bowlserised
• Dawn Porter in the Nude (about, well, Dawn Porter naked, but in a documentary-reviewing sort of way)– Louche, I’m Not Gay

Marie Javins, author of the blog No Hurry in JC, doesn’t write these, but they still happen: “I get loads of link-throughs from people searching for "lion porn" from the Simba Love entry. Go figure.

“Also tons of hits from people searching for JC Marie, who is apparently some sexy model.”

The search-engine hilarity doesn't stop there. Javins authored the travelogue book Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik, so she suffers "hits all the time from people searching for dik, hot dik, big dik, and other variations. Because the world is full of bad spellers.”

Many bloggers monitor search terms and post or riff on the most amusing ones. It creates something of a feedback loop, but seems like mostly harmless amusement...

Other headline gurus speak out

• Rhythm Makes Your Headlines Sing (Doo Dah, Doo Dah)
• Rhymes and Reason
• The art of writing headlines
• So Many Headlines, So Few Zingers
• Readers Consume What They See
• Writing Headlines