Have your headlines been doing some heavy lifting? If you've been using one headline to serve multiple audiences, you're missing out on some key optimization opportunities. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand gives you a process for writing headlines for SEO, for social media, and for your website visitors — each custom-tailored to its audience and optimized to meet different goals.
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Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about writing headlines. One of the big problems that headlines have is that they need to serve multiple audiences. So it's not just ranking and search engines. Even if it was, the issue is that we need to do well on social media. We need to serve our website visitors well in order to rank in the search engines. So this gets very challenging.
I've tried to illustrate this with a Venn diagram here. So you can see, basically...
SEO
In the SEO world of headline writing, what I'm trying to do is rank well, earn high click-through rate, because I want a lot of those visitors to the search results to choose my result, not somebody else's. I want low pogo-sticking. I don't want anyone clicking the back button and choosing someone else's result because I didn't fulfill their needs. I need to earn links, and I've got to have engagement.
Social media
On the social media side, it's pretty different actually. I'm trying to earn amplification, which can often mean the headline tells as much of the story as possible. Even if you don't read the piece, you amplify it, you retweet it, and you re-share it. I'm looking for clicks, and I'm looking for comments and engagement on the post. I'm not necessarily too worried about that back button and the selection of another item. In fact, time on site might not even be a concern at all.
Website visitors
For website visitors, both of these are channels that drive traffic. But for the site itself, I'm trying to drive right visitors, the ones who are going to be loyal, who are going to come back, hopefully who are going to convert. I want to not confuse anyone. I want to deliver on my promise so that I don't create a bad brand reputation and detract from people wanting to click on me in the future. For those of you have visited a site like Forbes or maybe even a BuzzFeed and you have an association of, "Oh, man, this is going to be that clickbait stuff. I don't want to click on their stuff. I'm going to choose somebody else in the results instead of this brand that I remember having a bad experience with."
Notable conflicts
There are some notable direct conflicts in here.
- Keywords for SEO can be really boring on social media sites. When you try and keyword stuff especially or be keyword-heavy, your social performance tends to go terribly.
- Creating mystery on social, so essentially not saying what the piece is truly about, but just creating an inkling of what it might be about harms the clarity that you need for search in order to rank well and in order to drive those clicks from a search engine. It also hurts your ability generally to do keyword targeting.
- The need for engagement and brand reputation that you've got for your website visitors is really going to hurt you if you're trying to develop those clickbait-style pieces that do so well on social.
- In search, ranking for low-relevance keywords is going to drive very unhappy visitors, people who don't care that just because you happen to rank for this doesn't necessarily mean that you should, because you didn't serve the visitor intent with the actual content.
Getting to resolution
So how do we resolve this? Well, it's not actually a terribly hard process. In 2017 and beyond, what's nice is that search engines and social and visitors all have enough shared stuff that, most of the time, we can get to a good, happy resolution.
Step one: Determine who your primary audience is, your primary goals, and some prioritization of those channels.
You might say, "Hey, this piece is really targeted at search. If it does well on social, that's fine, but this is going to be our primary traffic driver." Or you might say, "This is really for internal website visitors who are browsing around our site. If it happens to drive some traffic from search or social, well that's fine, but that's not our intent."
Step two: For non-conflict elements, optimize for the most demanding channel.
For those non-conflicting elements, so this could be the page title that you use for SEO, it doesn't always have to perfectly match the headline. If it's a not-even-close match, that's a real problem, but an imperfect match can still be okay.
So what's nice in social is you have things like Twitter cards and the Facebook markup, graph markup. That Open Graph markup means that you can have slightly different content there than what you might be using for your snippet, your meta description in search engines. So you can separate those out or choose to keep those distinct, and that can help you as well.
Step three: Author the straightforward headline first.
I'm going to ask you author the most straightforward version of the headline first.
Step four: Now write the social-friendly/click-likely version without other considerations.
Is to write the opposite of that, the most social-friendly or click-likely/click-worthy version. It doesn't necessarily have to worry about keywords. It doesn't have to worry about accuracy or telling the whole story without any of these other considerations.
Step five: Merge 3 & 4, and add in critical keywords.
We're going to take three and four and just merge them into something that will work for both, that compromises in the right way, compromises based on your primary audience, your primary goals, and then add in the critical keywords that you're going to need.
Examples:
I've tried to illustrate this a bit with an example. Nest, which Google bought them years ago and then they became part of the Alphabet Corporation that Google evolved into. So Nest is separately owned by Alphabet, Google's parent company. Nest came out with this new alarm system. In fact, the day we're filming this Whiteboard Friday, they came out with a new alarm system. So they're no longer just a provider of thermostats inside of houses. They now have something else.
Step one: So if I'm a tech news site and I'm writing about this, I know that I'm trying to target gadget and news readers. My primary channel is going to be social first, but secondarily search engines. The goal that I'm trying to reach, that's engagement followed by visits and then hopefully some newsletter sign-ups to my tech site.
Step two: My title and headline in this case probably need to match very closely. So the social callouts, the social cards and the Open Graph, that can be unique from the meta description if need be or from the search snippet if need be.
Step three: I'm going to do step three, author the straightforward headline. That for me is going to be "Nest Has a New Alarm System, Video Doorbell, and Outdoor Camera." A little boring, probably not going to tremendously well on social, but it probably would do decently well in search.
Step four: My social click-likely version is going to be something more like "Nest is No Longer Just a Thermostat. Their New Security System Will Blow You Away." That's not the best headline in the universe, but I'm not a great headline writer. However, you get the idea. This is the click-likely social version, the one that you see the headline and you go, "Ooh, they have a new security system. I wonder what's involved in that." You create some mystery. You don't know that it includes a video doorbell, an outdoor camera, and an alarm. You just hear, "They've got a new security system. Well, I better look at it."
Step five: Then I can try and compromise and say, "Hey, I know that I need to have video doorbell, camera, alarm, and Nest." Those are my keywords. Those are the important ones. That's what people are going to be searching for around this announcement, so I've got to have them in there. I want to have them close to the front. So "Nest's New Alarm, Video Doorbell and Camera Are About to Be on Every Home's Must-Have List." All right, resolved in there.
So this process of writing headlines to serve these multiple different, sometimes competing priorities is totally possible with nearly everything you're going to do in SEO and social and for your website visitors. This resolution process is something hopefully you can leverage to get better results.
All right, everyone, we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
Great topic, and a great example with Nest.
It's always a discussion between the editors, SEO, Social, and Product. In the end everyone thinks they're right.
Interesting to note, that since Facebook disabled the ability to edit the title, description and image on link posts (as part of their fight against Fake News), at least when it comes to articles--the social media teams now have to work closely with the editors. Now, if the Social media team wants a specific title, it has to be determined at the moment the article is published (og:title/og:description/og:image). And that's not a small challenge.
That's not entirely true. You can still edit the headline and description text in Hootsuite.
It's why I generally create two different headlines -- one for social and one for SEO purposes. They're somewhat related so users don't feel like they landed on the wrong page, but they're different enough to appeal to both types of audiences.
Good article! In agencies we always have the debate between SEOs and social media content manager about how we should write articles, and especially headlines.
Usually we get contents that have opposite reactions, great seo, low social sharing, and vice versa.
Thanks again for this WBF!
Excellent WBF Rand! For us is always a struggle to find the right balance between the SEO and social titles. Lately we've been using your technique to have a SEO-friendly <h1> title and a social-friendly meta title. Still learning to do it properly...
Really nice article. It's always a bit dificult to integrate those three methods to build your headlines. I'm focusing on less kw's in H1 and better clickbait for RRSS ;)
Surely most of us have learnt a lot of hidden ways to create tricky headlines that may work together for multiple sharing. Thanks Rand!!
Thanks Rand for your advice.
They will certainly be helpful in reflecting on many people who have to deal with SEO at some point in their lives.
However, the situation is complicated in certain more traditional professional sectors. I have tried to switch to more attractive and creative web titles that deal with Spanish law. However, in this sector I have noticed that users prefer specific and very serious titles and that they have nothing of humour. Looks like you don't play with rights. In contrast, digital marketing is different.
True...
Usually the titles I use for SEO just work for me in social networks and a flashy title rarely positions me. The key, then make the title depending on what you are looking for
Thanks for sharing another great topic!
Writing a perfect headline always be a most difficult part and if you are creating a headline that covers SEO, Social Media and attract visitors to the website looks like impossible.
I'm always taking help of top marketers and SEO analyst how they write perfect headlines. They know the better way of the engaging audience.
Thanks once again for sharing an amazing post with us.
Something else to consider is that a user's frame of mind changes from platform to platform. You're on FB to have a laugh, twitter to read, linkedin to do business. Really hitting the nail on the head and staying attractive for each segment of users takes good copywriting.
I wish more people went with the straight headline approach. The cheap click-bait process of writing headlines with "You Won't BELIEVE What Happened Next" or "These 3 Tips Will Make You Rich" really should be punished by Google and Bing, and it seems they kind of are.... They're nondescript, empty, and void of any actual information.
The more I learn about best SEO practices for content, the more I realize how principle-based the practice is. Advocate for yourself, share useful information, present it in an easy to read format, and engage with your audience.
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Great article.
While working on web publishing, I usually get stuck between the communications (editors) team, social media team, and SEO team when it comes to headlines. I know each team has their reasons, but it's difficult to balance them all.
Thanks for the recommendation of social callouts, social cards & the Open Graph.
Another way to have different titles for SEO and Social would be by using Open Graph title and description tags. Though it would be a little time consuming to do manually for every post/page of yours, but it could be worth the time if it brings the clicks and engagement from social media and also it won't cause any problem to the SEO version which should be the original or actual version of titles.
Thank you Rand. Steps 3 through 5 are a great exercise. I'm looking forward to putting the process to work and seeing what comes of it.
Really useful topic. You guys must have a great technique on how to come up with interesting article ideas. So far, WBF has always had an awesome topic.
So, I basically I was thrown into cold water doing CM now - and I gotta say: Thank you! Your Whiteboard Friday clips are short and simple, easy to memorize, essential and therefor very helpful! So, thanks again from a newbie. Cheers!
Thanks for share Rad
La verdad es que el tema de los títulos no es simple, y depende del perfil del escritor que ha escrito más tienda para mejorar su meta, seo SEO, Social Media, ...
I think before publishing a content should be reviewed for the whole team to suggest new ideas for the titles.
Thanks!
I am always trying to set the headline and focus on H1 tag more precisely, thanks for the tips that title is not going to exact match with heading.
HI,
I am always looking forward to your videos. There is always something new I can learn.
A topic that would interest me a lot and is related to closely yours is actually would be: "How to write Titles/Headlines that convert better?"
Rand... what you say is useful for knowing how to develop the headlines differently for each platform but what you don't specify is that usually, you can actually add 3 titles:
I'm talking specifically for Wordpress users now, but I know it's applicable anywhere.
So basically if you use Yoast, you can change the Search Engine Title, while your H1 from the article title will display on your website. Then you can use the Social stuff from Yoast to change the OG title property and display a completely different title in Facebook, Twitter, etc.
So basically yes... one title doesn't have to do it all 'couse you can have 3
I think Rand referred to that when he spoke about Twitter cards and Facebook Graph, not sure if I'm right!
Thanks, very interesting and usefull article, especially with the nest examples. So you wouldn´t worry in your example that the title has 90 char, that would make it less than optimal for search because your main channel is Social?
Thanks Rand, great WBF. I'm often guilty of overlooking the social aspects of my content. This was a good reminder to be more aware of how I am writing and to always remember to keep all of my audiences in mind. The example summed it up well.
Great topic - I've always enjoyed Moz's use of different headlines in different places.
Great post. I was just wrestling with SEO headlines vs Social headlines yesterday. So, are you saying we can put the SEO headline as the Page title and the Social headline as the post headline?
I'm a big fan of your steps to write a straightforward headline along with a social-friendly headline, and combine them. That's a great process that can spark some stellar headline ideas. My only concern in doing this is the length of the headline. I think Twitter has trained a lot of us to be able to squeeze a lot of thoughts into a small space, so it's workable, and I suppose that as long as the users attention is captured, the length doesn't really matter.
I work closely with a social media coordinator at our office, and sometimes other conflicts come into play like image size and how those appear when posted to social. In an agency situation, I think it's great to have a process like this that minimizes any conflicts or bottlenecks for SEO or social.
Everything always comes back to knowing your audience and strategically targeting them through different channels. This is a great reinforcement of that.
Thank you for the post, and happy Friday!
From the last two weeks I have been posting this comment on the whiteboard friday. I thought that Mr. Rand would be busy but he will surely give me his valubale time & answer my query. But it's been 15-20 days, still no reply from the Mr. Rand. Very dissappointed with this kind of response. I hope he answers my question this time.
This is what I had posted earlier:
Recently I wrote a blog & then decided to use the tactic of guest posting for it. I posted my 50% of the content on guest posting sites such as LinkedIn, Medium, YourStory etc. & then I applied backlink for my site.
Is it beneficial for my site?
Is it a Ranking factor? what are your opinion regarding this.
I regularly follow your WhiteBoard & one thing I noticed that your articles are always informative but the readability of the site is poor. Can you improve the design of your website? If you don't mind!
You should try sending an email. I emailed Rand a few months ago about a question and he answered back pretty quickly. Unfortunately some of the lower comments (later in the day) on WBF can be overlooked (by all of us).
Hi Mohit, Rad Probably is a little bit busy, so do not worrie about it. Im going to help you as I can.
Is it beneficial for my site?
Of course is good for your site, most the social networks add the tag nofollow to your links, but probably can generate traffic or someone see the content and link to your site.
https://moz.com/blog/seo-value-nofollow-links
Is it a Ranking factor? If they generate quality links yes will count as a ranking factor
https://moz.com/blog/10-things-do-not-affect-ranki...
Hi, Roman I am a newer SEO Executive and when i was reading about dofollow and nofollow backlinks then i got nofollow links are harmful for sites. But you are saying it's a quality backlinks, Plz explain HOW. Really i made many Dofollow and also HI da nofollow backlinks but i did not get better result. can you explain...
I am working on Karmaayurveda.in you can see it's backlinks