Writing totally original article headlines that get the click can be real tough sometimes. However, thankfully, there are some shortcuts that can help you write powerful headlines for your articles.
The easiest way to start writing great article headlines is to copy the top pros in your niche and adapt their headline to your article. How do you do that? There are several sources of this kind of inspiration:
1. Go to Yahoo News or MSN News or Google News and do a search for the keyword you are targeting in your article. Take some of the headlines from their articles and put in the information for your topic and see how you feel about it. These three do extensive testing to see how much their headlines are being clicked. Their headline writers are real pros. Copy their headlines and substitute their subject with the subject matter of your specific article.
2. Go to YouTube and punch in your keyword. You will find some good ideas there. Look for the video with the most views. People don't click on videos unless the title attracts their attention. Since these are videos, not articles, you can conceivably use the popular video headline as your article headline and no one will mind.
3. You can also go to Amazon.com, indigo.com and other book selling sites. Look at the titles for the top selling books, ebooks, DVD's and CD's. Base your article around the top titles and make a headline out of the title if appropriate.
4. Magazines.com and other magazine sites can be a good source of article headlines that you can get from the covers they show for niche magazines.
5. Magazine directories for Yahoo, MSN, Google and others can be a great source of headline ideas.
6. Then there are specific magazines that are known for their great headline writers like The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, National Enquirer, World News, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and others. Look for the top magazines in your niche and adapt their stories and headlines for them to your article.
7. Be sure to look at niche specific magazines by typing in your niche + directory or niche + magazines into Google and look at the results.
8. Don't forget about the newsletters in your niche. Do a search for any of the above ideas and replace the word magazines with newsletters. There are many paid and free newsletters that have some really great headlines and article topics.
9. Next, you can look at the Google AdWords ads that you'll find on the right side of the page of any Google search. These are paid ads so you know people are putting their best into the headlines. Be careful with these ads though. Many people don't know what they are doing. Watch the top AdWords ads over a span of several days, if not several weeks. If you find an ad being repeated over time it's probably getting a lot of clicks.
10. Google AdWords ads are another source of some really good inspiration if you click on the ad and look at the headlines they are using in their sales letters, on the website, landing page, menu items, etc. AdWords ads are placed in order of popularity from top to bottom by Google so you know the top ads are the ones people are clicking on the most. Be careful here because it is possible to buy the top position by paying more. On the other hand, if an ad stays at the top for a long period of time, it must be working or they would get tired of paying the big bucks for something that doesn't sell.
11. The last but certainly not the least source of good ideas are the social networking sites. Look at sites like Digg.com, propeller and others to see what people are rating as the best. Look for which ones get the most views, the 'likes' and other ways of expressing popularity. You'll find some great ideas there!
Hope that helps get your wheels turning and you find some great inspiration to write article headlines that get the click.
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