Headlines are different online
The Problem
Here are some headlines from Melbourne’s Age newspaper recently:
- Tiny digger turns deserts into gardens
- Wedge politics
- You can’t hide when you seek
- Dreaming the next stage
- Look how she’s grown!
Can you see what’s wrong? These headlines are all fine in a printed paper, where they are in designated sections, accompanied by images and subheadings (ie context). For most websites, though, they simply wouldn’t work. And that includes the newspaper site that these headlines were reproduced on.
Why? Because headlines often appear out of context on websites; in lists of articles, archive pages and on internal and external search results pages.
Take another look, and imagine these headlines are a list of links to products or articles on your site. What are the links about? Why would a potential customer click on any one of them?
The Answer
Having read the newspaper stories, these would have been more useful and appropriate headlines:
- Bilby foraging creates nutrient-rich land
- Urban planning about-face on Green Wedge strategy
- Is Google too powerful?
- Calls for a national indigenous theatre company
- Justine Clarke hits big time with kids
The strategy is simple: link text should describe what the target content is about. Don’t be cute. Don’t be clever. Save that for the article itself.
Clicks will be more qualified; visitors will likely be actually interested in the content. Your users will love you, Google will love you. Everyone wins. And it’s a double-win for SERP (search engine results page) skimmers.
Not The Answer
Of course, you can go the other way, and totally disrespect your audience for the short-term benefit of cheap traffic. Australian media analysis TV program Media Watch reported an example from June 2009 where News Limited newspaper websites around the country featured a story titled ‘Missing baby found in Sandwich’.
The baby in question was only missing for a couple of hours, and was eventually found safe and well in Sandwich, Massachusetts.
Funny? Maybe. But how many readers who clicked the link were pleased with the punchline?
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