Headlines have been important to writing since the very first person figured out how to stitch pages together. They remain an important factor when it comes to the success of online content. Your headlines have to serve as advertisements, SEO tools and introductions for content, all rolled into one.

Although many businesses choose to source content from outside sources, many site owners still find themselves having to craft or rework titles. It might be that your writer hasn’t included any search engine optimisation tactics into this important position. It might be that the title’s style doesn’t suit your site. It may even be that the piece came without a title. Knowing the tricks of reworking can take some of the pressure off in crafting titles in the first place.

1. Remove extra information. This is one of the easiest ways to rework your headline, and can come in handy when composing headlines, too. Take the title of this piece for example. A good way to describe this particular article would be ‘how to rework or create the perfect headline.’ This is a little clunky, so the words ‘or create’ need to be removed.

2. Rearranging the words. Again, this article’s title ‘How to rework the perfect headline’, can easily be shortened further through rearrangement, and simply ‘Rework for perfect headlines’ would make for a catchy title.

3. Word omission. Most writers will cringe at having to remove the linking words from a headline, but it’s a trick that newspapers have been doing for centuries. This technique comes in handy when you are low on space or want to really catch the eye. Reading the headlines of any newspaper will give you an idea of how this technique is done, but an example for this article would be ‘Great headline reworks.’

4. Sensationalise it. This technique is frequently used by blog writers for their headlines. The core element of this headline rework is to inject excitement. A good example of this article’s headline, reworked for sensationalism, is ‘Give your headlines zing!’ As you can see, this headline is very catchy, if a little too excitable for some more staid sites. You can talk to our experts at SEO Consult about matching titles to sites.

5. Ignoring the subject. Sometimes, throwing away your subject is what your titles need. This can pique your reader’s interest. For example, ‘Got some zing?’ is a tantalising title that still applies to this article. Again, this method doesn’t fit all sites, and should be used with a great deal of caution.

The way you rework titles will depend on your target audience. If the audience is your site’s users, the title needs to fit in with your other content. If the audience is a social media site, you need to find what will appeal to that particular audience – for example, ‘how to’ articles are very popular on Digg, and titles with ‘video’ work around You Tube.

None of these title reworks are about dishonesty. It is important that your title stays faithful to the content. Putting a sensational title on boring content will only get you disgruntled site users and ultimately harm your reputation.

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