Why Generic Headlines Fail – and Secrets to Boosting Success

Titles are a very important component of the writing we do. The title and the opening words of our post are what generally show up in social media shares, and in the search results on sites like Google. There has been a lot of talk lately about how much we can earn with our posts and while I dislike talking about the specifics of anyone’s earnings, based on what others are saying about how much their posts are paying out, I know that some writers here on LiteracyBase could be earning twice or even four times what they are making now.

Could LiteracyBase Writers Be Earning More?

I wanted to explore something concrete, to show everyone how much room for improvement there is. So I took a sample of ten posts from LiteracyBase, and I compared them with another ten posts I found shared on a Facebook group for writers. You’ll be amazed at how much the ten LiteracyBase titles had in common! But I think most people will be disappointed when they see how poorly the titles scored.

The first part of this topic introduces my informal experiment, and it also looks at the length of the titles. In every single case, the LiteracyBase titles were too short to rank well for SEO purposes. Many were so short and vague, that a lot of human readers will skip over them completely.

If you are wondering why your posts are paying less right now, your titles are the first and easiest thing you can work on. Getting a better score for your title is the first step to earning better pay, and getting more people to read your posts. Read more about the tools that can help you write a better title, and follow the rest of my comparison here below!

Questions, Lists, and How-To Titles Perform Best

Titles that do the best on social media and in search engines follow certain styles. Among the most popular are the question, the list, and the how-to title. Other headline styles will use a negative (e.g, “Never Count Calories Again”) or will reference time in some way (e.g. “The Last Day I Spent on the Beach.”) Some titles leverage the desire to be on the cutting edge, or to discover something exclusive that other people don’t necessarily know (e.g. “Exciting New Trends for Entertaining” or “Secrets to Making the Best Pancakes.”)

Questions and how-to titles most often match the search strings that potential readers are plugging into Google or Bing. Generic titles are those that use none of these styles. They may include keywords for your topic (e.g. “Ram 1500 SXT Quad Cab 4×4” or “Surfing in the Philippines”) but generic titles are very plain and don’t really give potential readers enough context to know whether your post is what they’re looking for.

You’re best off writing a title that gives the potential reader more of an idea where you’re headed. Try something like, “Where are the Best Places to Surf in the Philippines?” or, “Top 5 Reasons You Want to Be Driving a Ram.”

LiteracyBase Titles are Too Generic

I continued my analysis of the ten titles from LiteracyBase, as always comparing them to another group of ten titles that had been shared on a Facebook writers group. To get the overall score for each title, I used a free headline analyzer that you can all access easily online. But for this part of the test, we don’t even need the analyzer to tell us the results. It’s easy to see which titles were questions, lists, how-to headlines, etc., and even easier to spot the generics.

How did LiteracyBase fare on headline types? Sadly, 90% of the titles were generic. In the Facebook sample, on the other hand, there was a much better variety of styles: 2 titles referenced time, 1 was a list, 1 was a question, and 1 a how-to. Only 50% of the Facebook group used a generic title. So we here at LiteracyBase have a lot of catching up to do!

Why are Titles So Difficult to Compose?

Weak titles that leave the potential reader flat are common on sites that publish user-generated content. Titles tend to be generic, too broad or ambiguous, and many give no clue whatsoever to the reader as to the subject of the post. These titles are sure to be passed over, both by visitors who are already on the site and by anyone who comes across them in search engine results or social media shares.

Users on social writing sites don’t earn much for their work and as a result, they try to dash posts off very quickly to maximize earnings. Common time-saving strategies can result in a title that is both generic and vague – and sometimes even a title that has little or even nothing to do with the main topic of the post.

• Inexperienced writers tend to draft a post without any planning or outlining, resulting in content that is too broad for anything but an ambiguous, generic title;
• Writers often choose the title before they compose the content, and then may actually stray so far that the post only peripherally mentions the topic highlighted in the title;
• Writers in a hurry to post once they’ve finished writing will choose a generic title quickly, thinking of it as just another hoop to jump through before their content will go live.

These habits result not only in generic titles but often in titles that bear little relation to the main theme of the post – which evolves as the user writes. Treating the title as an afterthought, rather than as an important component in the overall package of the post, leads to lower pay for an otherwise good post. And it means that the few pennies the post earns at the time of publication are probably all the post will ever earn – there are no significant passive earnings for posts that lack SEO and that little bit of glitz or polish that most readers are looking for!

Writers Can Learn to Improve Weak Titles

The results for this part of my informal experiment actually prompted me to write a separate post about how to transform a humdrum headline into a killer title. So if you’re a person who lacks inspiration when it comes time to compose the title, I hope you’ll check it out! I give three boring titles a lift, and ensure that all of them get the green light from CoSchedule.

This post the second in a series. The first part is “LiteracyBase vs Facebook Shares: Who Won the Battle?”

Please watch for Part III, which will examine how LiteracyBase titles perform when it comes to power words and emotional triggers. I’ll also be issuing a challenge that I hope will help you improve your own headlines through a series of easy steps. In the meantime, check out this article on what makes a great headline!

Original content © 2016 Kyla Matton Osborne

This article was published on LiteracyBase. If you are reading this content anywhere else, it has probably been stolen. Please report it to me so I can address any copyright infringements. Thank you!

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