19 Rules For Writing Killer Headlines

Following are 19 rules you can use to write headlines that will reach out and force the prospect to read your website and sales letter.

1. Your headline must offer somethign that your target market wants very badly.

2. Your headline must include something of self interest to the reader.

3. If your product is new or improved, say so in the headline.

4. Do not just invoke curiosity in your headline, you must also include something of interest to the reader.

5. Avoid negativity in your headline. Always turn the negative into a positive statement.

6. Your headline shoudl suggest a quick and easy way to achieve the benefit(s) stated.

7. Your headline should be believable.

8. Determine what would make you buy your product, and then try to incorporate that idea into your headline.

9. Avoid making your headline so short that you don't get the main point across.

10. Avoid clever headlines that makes the reader think "how clever." Cleverness rarely gets people to read your web page or spend money.

11. Avoid headlines that sound dead, or like they should be at the bottom of the statue like "To Server Humanity Better..."

12. Suggest in your headline that your copy contains useful and valuable information.

13. Use your headline to reach out and grab the reader's attention.

14. Avoid hard to grasp headlines that require the reader to think about what you are saying.

15. NEVER trust your own reaction to your headlines. Instead, get the reaction of someone else.

16. If you emphasize a word in your headline, make sure that word means something and is important.

17. Remember that large type words act as a stopper. They get people to stop and pay attention, so choose the best words that will get the most attention.

18. Don't let an artist or layout person decide which headline words to emphasize. An artest thinks in terms of color contrasts and tones, not in terms of making money!

19. Avoid writing an ad that attracts the wrong people. Make sure your headline attracts the people that are most interested in what you have to offer.

If you will follow these simple guidelines for writing your headline copy, you will be more likely to have a successful headline and a successful ad! Take some time right now and look back over these guidelines.

Then, try to write your own headlines. When you have a few that you think are wonderful, run them by a friend. If that friend asks to see the rest of your copy, you know you have written a true killer headline.

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Web Traffic - Is Your Content Making Your Web Site Invisible?

We Web content writers lead quiet lives peering at a computer monitor and tapping a keyboard. I even eat lunch at the keyboard, because it means that I can do some relaxing Web surfing without feeling guilty.

So drama was the last thing I expected on a cold winter's day when I bit into my peanut butter, raisin, and celery sandwich, and grabbed the ringing phone with my other hand.

A woman I didn't know sobbed into my ear: "My boss says our Web site's a disaster. We're not getting any visitors at all.... and I'm going to be fired."

I tried to tell her that it couldn't be that bad, and even if it was, we'd fix it, but it took ten minutes for her to calm down enough to tell me what the URL (Web address) was. When I looked at the site, I had a pretty good idea why her boss was mad.

It was a real estate site. Very nice. Tasteful -- elegant even. But clicking around the site, I could see that while artistically the site  was fine, as a commercial Web site, it had big challenges.

No wonder the site wasn't getting any traffic. The site was almost invisible to the search engines.

At a guess, the site would be lucky to get five visitors a day, unless the real estate company bought traffic via Pay Per Click or other advertising.

Unfortunately, it turns out that they'd already spent too much on the site. Unless the sobbing lady got the site to do what had been promised by the developers -- get at least a thousand visitors a day and FAST -- her job was history.

Here's what I found on the site:

A Flash intro to the site

Flash animation was popular several years ago, but its popularity died when site owners realized that most Flash is just annoying. When someone comes to your site, they want information, and they want it right away.

 Big images on every page

The images looked lovely, gorgeous homes, but only a few words of text. From a search engine standpoint, there was nothing to index on the pages.

Almost no text

Again, with very little text, there was nothing for search engines to index, and therefore no chance that the site would get traffic from the site search engines.

NO "real estate"-related keywords

The site was called (not the real name, this name is fictitious) "Thomas Fedeck Green and Smythe Incorporated". This name was on every page. I'm sure that the name was well known to the real estate buyers in the company's home city, but it meant nothing to most Web surfers, and worse -- there was nothing connecting "Thomas Fedeck Green and Smythe Incorporated" with the keywords "real estate".

Worse yet, someone had decided to create images of each property's listing so that a very fancy font could be used. Again, nothing for the Web search engines to index.

Flash movies

Every listing on the site was accompanied by a Flash movie of the property, with an agent showing off the features of each property.

 My recommendation: get some text onto each and every page

"The site's fine," I assured my caller, whose sobs had calmed down. "You just need material for the Web search engines to index. The engines aren't psychic. They don't know what your site is about. You have to tell them in words. Get some words onto the site -- words about real estate, and you'll get traffic in no time."

The happy ending: a rapid uptick in traffic

I developed a Web content plan for the site, and within a few weeks the site got an excellent uptick in traffic. The traffic's been steadily growing.

My caller wasn't fired. When I heard from her just a few days ago, she'd been made a partner. A happy ending all around -- and a site that was made visible at last.