Author Archives: Amrit Hallan

About Amrit Hallan

Amrit Hallan is a professional content writer who helps businesses improve their conversion rate through credible and compelling content writing. His main strength lies in writing search engine optimized content without compromizing quality and meaningfulness.

5 ways quality content affects your content marketing

5 ways quality content affects your content marketing

5 ways quality content affects your content marketing

There is no denying the fact that quality content is the core building block of a well-established digital marketing strategy.

A compelling and well-structured content shares your brand story and ultimately helps in viewer conversion.

Besides imparting the necessary information, quality content is engaging that helps to grasp and retain the viewer’s attention.

It also triggers their inquisitiveness which makes them want to learn more about the topic.

Every digital marketer, as well as business experts, know the value of high-quality content.

Simply speaking, if you don’t put enough emphasis on generating quality content, no marketing strategies, no matter how good they are, will work.

What is high quality content?

Before divulging further into the ways quality content affects marketing, let us first understand what it exactly is.

Its common characteristics include informative, and helpful.

Quality content also helps to answer all the probable questions regarding the topic.

Moreover, it is unique and original and targets human readers and not search engines.

However, sometimes even the most talented writers commit errors that degrade the content quality.

For example, they make it complicated and therefore hard to understand.

Poor content is also unoriginal, irrelevant, monotonous and tries to manipulate the readers by sharing false information.

Thus, these need to be avoided at all costs.

5 ways quality content impacts marketing

Better conversions

The content you post on your page is one of the primary factors that influence conversions.

The information educates the reader about your brand and its services, a crucial step that determines their purchasing decision.

Besides this, the content also helps to establish a connection between the customer and the company.

This is especially important in the case of blogs as they have immense potential to attract traffic.

I recommend you use original graphics instead of stock photos in your content as the former is more effective due to its uniqueness.

Moreover, please make sure to guide readers on the next step they should take and always include a Call To Action (CTA) button.

Earn customer trust

As already stated above, one of the most common characteristics of quality content is its value and helpfulness.

If readers derive both of these things from your content, they are more likely to put their trust in your brand.

In recent times, buyers have become more cautious, and they do not like to read pretentious content that tries to oversell.

They want to make their own decisions.

Informational and quality content allows them to take their own time to make educated decisions and purchase your company’s services or products.

There is no point in trying to bamboozle or manipulate a modern customer.

They would want to stay loyal to a brand that is successful in delivering all the promises that had been mentioned in the content.

Stand out in the market

High-quality content enables you to stand out from the rest of your competitors in the industry.

Simply speaking, it puts you in a position of authority.

If your website content is credible and informational, there is a good chance of gaining a higher search engine rank, which in turn attracts a higher number of customers.

Quality content also showcases your expertise in the particular field and answers the readers’ inquiries.

Thus, you appear as an industry expert which increases your brand’s trustworthiness.

New business opportunities

Besides gaining more customers, quality content might also attract new investors and business partners.

There is no need to hard sell your business products and services when high-quality content already exists on your website.

If your blog post or some other content featuring yourself or your company succeeds in creating a favorable impression, several profitable investment or partnership opportunities might arise which will help in your business growth.

Save money

There is no denying the fact that marketing is a costly process.

Besides, the money charged by freelancers or in-office full-time writers, you might have to spend way more money on digital marketing strategies such as paid searches if the content is not up to mark.

If you compare marketing methods such as traditional marketing, display advertising and content marketing, there is no better process than content marketing if you wish to garner a greater audience on a limited budget.

How to write quality content?

Now that we have a brief idea of what quality content is and the role it plays in marketing, it is important to know how to write it.

Please remember that you are writing content for the audience and not for yourself or the search engines.

You must consider what your audience would like to read about and make sure to answer and solve all their probable questions and problems regarding the topic.

Research is extremely important.

You need to devote ample amounts of time to proper research.

This not only helps in making the content informational and accurate but also builds language proficiency.

Please make sure that your content is not just informational in a bland way.

People would not prefer reading the entire article if it’s not engaging and captivating enough.

The content structure is also included in this.

There need to be proper headings and subheadings and original images.

Readability also plays a significant role.

People would not like to spend their time deciphering or decoding hard words and complicated sentences.

Moreover, quality content is credible and trustworthy.

As already mentioned before, modern buyers do not prefer hard sales that do not live up to their expectations.

Wrapping up

Thus, we can conclude that high-quality content is a principal factor that determines the success of a digital marketing campaign to a large extent.

It establishes a level of trustworthiness with your target audience and provides them with interesting and valuable information that cannot be found elsewhere.

Track the traffic and leads generated by specific content such as a blog post to ensure if it is doing well.

Lastly, please remember that in the long run, content quality overtakes quantity.

5 SEO copywriting tips to improve your rankings and conversion rate

SEO copywriting tips to improve your rankings and conversion rate

SEO copywriting tips to improve your rankings and conversion rate

Effective copywriting follows a multipronged approach.

It aims to improve your search engine rankings organically.

It also aims to improve your conversion rate in addition to meaningfully engaging your visitors.

Many clients these days prefer to hire SEO copywriting services instead of content writing services because then they can get the best of both worlds.

What exactly is SEO copywriting?

Is it same as SEO content writing?

Not necessarily.

Remember that the end goal of copywriting is to convert leads.

The end goal of content writing is to generate organic traffic.

Therefore, in the conventional sense, you use content writing to generate organic traffic and then you use copywriting to convert that traffic into paying customers and clients.

Another big difference between copywriting and content writing is that when you write copy for a web page or even a blog post, there is a clearly defined CTA (call-to-action).

The purpose of general content is to provide information and generate awareness whereas the purpose of copywriting is to prompt people to take action.

SEO copywriting means writing the copy in such a manner that it also helps you improve your search engine rankings.

Just because you are writing copy to generate leads it doesn’t mean search engine rankings are irrelevant.

Just as search engine rankings are important for your average blog post, they are also important for your business web pages, for which, copywriting is required.

What type of content requires SEO copywriting?

Frankly, anything.

It is often said that copywriting is mostly required for promotional material but even when you are writing for your blog posts and articles, you can wear the hat of a copywriter and write a convincing copy to make people take an action.

This is especially important when you are writing a business blog.

Nonetheless, you may require SEO copywriting for following types of content:

  • Main website copy
  • Landing pages
  • Product descriptions
  • Blog posts and articles.

One of the biggest benefits of SEO copywriting is that it forces a writer to write both for the search engines and the users.

Listed below are 5 SEO copywriting tips that can help you improve your search engine rankings as well as conversion rate.

Make a list of questions that people ask

Google loves questions so much that it ranks web pages and blog posts providing answers to query-based questions higher than other web pages and blog posts.

Therefore, a query like, “How can I improve my SEO copywriting?” brings better and targeted results than “best SEO copywriting services”.

You can prepare a list of frequently asked questions.

You can use websites like AnswerThePublic, Quora, and Reddit to find out what questions people are asking pertaining to a certain field.

Why prepare copy based on questions?

People type complete questions – complete queries – when they ask precise questions.

If Google thinks that your answer precisely matches the question being asked, it features your content as a snippet, increasing your click-through-rate by almost 35%.

Additionally, you express yourself better when you are providing answers to straightforward questions.

It makes your copy easy flowing.

Use your main keyword in the title

The title of a web page is different from the main headline.

The title appears as a hyperlink in your search engine listings, just above the description.

In HTML parlance, it is also called “meta title”.

The headline on the other hand is the big font message that you see at the top of a blog post or web page.

They can be same, and they can be different depending on your preference and SEO needs.

People tend to click more on the links that contain the words they have just used in the query.

Your click-through-rate is important for better search engine rankings.

The more people click your search listings, the higher they begin to appear.

This is because when more people click your link Google thinks that it contains the relevant information for the query just used.

Use the language your target audience uses

This is one of the most important SEO copywriting tips.

Why is it important to use the language your target audience uses?

People normally use search queries in the language they are comfortable in.

Since a big portion of searches are voice searches these days, people search the way they speak.

They use conversational language.

Visit forums.

Spend some time on social media websites.

Directly interact with your customers and clients.

Carefully observe the way they talk to you.

The way they talk about your product or service may be completely different than how you talk about your product or service

For example, as a mobile phone manufacturer you may talk about the AMOLED display as a great feature but for a user, the benefit is that he or she can watch videos clearer than an average flat screen TV.

As a SaaS provider, you may find the feature that your software can be used on every device but for the user, the more important aspect might be that he or she can subscribe for a lesser fee instead of paying a hefty one-time fee for a bulky software.

Write for the search intent

Your SEO copywriting becomes more effective if you write your copy based on search intent.

Search intent is the intention with which an individual uses Google or any other search engine.

People have distinct intentions and when you are writing copy you should be able to recognize that distinction.

Some people are simply looking for information.

They have no intention of doing business with you right now.

They don’t need to be convinced.

They simply need to be engaged with useful, relevant information so that by the time they are ready to do business with you, they recognize you and respect your opinion.

Their search intent is informational.

Some people, although ready to do business, haven’t made up their minds yet.

They need more information.

They need comparisons

They are ready to be sold to.

They are interested in reading FAQs, product comparisons, testimonials, and reviews.

They may be searching for something like, “pros and cons of Google Workspace and Windows 365”.

Their search intent is commercial.

Then some people are ready to buy.

They are searching for something like, “the best copywriting services for my accounting website”, or, “looking for SEO copywriter”.

Their search intent is transactional.

Write your copy targeting different searcher intents for better search engine rankings and conversion.

Don’t cram multiple keywords in a single document

Sometimes to save cost client send me a long list of keywords that need to be incorporated into a single document.

This is bad both for SEO and conversion rate.

I prefer to use only three keywords when I’m writing a blog post or web page.

One primary keyword and two related keywords.

When you are given a list of 10 or 15 keywords, unnecessarily you have to write extra words to incorporate all the keywords.

This dilutes the effectiveness of your entire copywriting process.

Whether you are doing SEO copywriting for your own website or working for a client, make sure that per page or per blog post you cover just 2-3 keywords.

Write in-depth blog posts and web pages

Both Google and your human readers prefer long form content – 1300-1500 words.

My average length is 1000-1200 words.

But, writing too many words doesn’t mean you fill up your blog posts and web pages with useless information.

Write long form content only when you have highly useful information to share with your readers.

Assuming you are delivering useful information, long form content makes readers spend more time on your website.

This reduces your bounce rate.

It increases engagement rate.

It helps you build your authority.

Long form content attracts backlinks from other websites and blogs.

Since lots of information is present on a single source, and since your bounce rate is low, Google begins to improve your search engine rankings for those pieces of content.

For improving your search engine rankings as well as engagement rate, have a long-term target for your SEO copywriting projects.

This is applicable to your own website and the websites of your clients.

Don’t overcommit.

Don’t promise results within a month or so.

No matter how excellent your blog posts and articles are, you cannot deliver tangible results in one or two months.

At the minimum, make a commitment of 6 months

It takes around 6-8 months of sustained SEO copywriting to experience some observable results in terms of better rankings and higher conversion rate.

What is thought leadership content and how it helps you grow your business?

Writing thought leadership content

Writing thought leadership content

Thought leadership enables you to demonstrate your expertise in a particular field, profession, or topic.

Many professionals and marketers these days strive to promote thought leadership through strategic content.

They write the content to show their command over their subject area and demonstrate to their audience how passionate and deeply involved they are in the subject matter.

Thought leadership content can include

  • Infographics
  • E-books
  • White papers
  • Blog posts
  • Newspaper and magazine articles
  • Podcasts
  • Webinars
  • Original research-based articles and blog posts
  • Social media updates

The main stress through thought leadership is original thinking, research, independent opinions, and an ability to predict future.

Thought leaders can evaluate industry trends.

They participate in ongoing debates.

They keep a tab on the current events and have something valuable to add to them.

When it pays to publish thought leadership content?

Thought leadership takes time to nurture.

You cannot suddenly start publishing authoritative content without making a name for yourself for being there in the hub of activities.

This Search Engine Journal article suggests that before starting on publishing your thought leadership content, increase your visibility.

Building thought leadership through content takes prolonged reputation management.

You need to manage public relations and social media.

You need to remain active and interact with your followers.

Participate in ongoing conversations.

Begin to be recognized as an expert in your field, or at least someone who always has something valuable to say.

Once people begin to recognize you, you can start publishing smaller pieces of leadership content, gradually moving towards comprehensive work that people will trust and pay attention to.

Why should you publish thought leadership content?

It earns you respect among the peers.

It makes people trust you.

People pay more attention to what you have to say.

They take your words seriously.

When it comes to doing business, people prefer to work with leaders rather than someone they don’t know.

Thought leadership content is good for your SEO.

In most of the cases, thought leadership content is written in long form – that is, you may write anywhere between 3000-5000 words.

Google prefers long form content because it provides comprehensive information at a single spot, to its visitors.

More people link to thought leadership content than average content.

This further improves your search engine rankings.

Thought leadership content improves your domain authority and your overall ranking potential.

It gets shared more on social media, further improving your visibility.

It can be repurposed into smaller content pieces.

How to develop a thought leadership content strategy?

Developing your thought leadership content requires planning and strategy.

You need to clearly identify your area of expertise.

What original research have you done?

How is your solution different from the solutions being provided by other businesses or thought leaders?

Why is your take different?

How have you overtaken challenges and tackled problems within your business?

What have you learned from your mistakes?

How will you publish your thought leadership content?

You may like to read the entire blog post in the above-mentioned link.

 

What stops your content from improving your search engine rankings?

What stops your content from improving your search engine rankings

What stops your content from improving your search engine rankings

Have you been posting content without much success with search engine rankings?

This can be frustrating.

Especially when you are putting in lots of effort and money into publishing high quality content on a regular basis.

How well your content ranks on search engines depends on multiple factors.

High-quality, relevant and engaging content is fundamental.

Without good content there can be no rankings.

Your search engine rankings depend on

  • How much content you have already published.
  • Your content publishing frequency.
  • Your content publishing consistency.
  • The niche of your content.
  • The topics you have been covering.
  • The relevance of your topics.
  • Your click-through-rate on search engine listings.
  • Your bounce rate.
  • Search engine optimization level of your content.
  • Social proof your website and individual links attract.
  • The quality of incoming links from external websites.
  • Internal linking of the content within your website or blog.
  • How easy or difficult it is for the search engine crawlers to access your content.
  • The age of your domain.

There are 200 odd factors that decide the search engine rankings of your content.

The factors that I have listed above are under your control.

There are many factors that are not under your control and they occur over a period of time, provided you keep publishing and promoting your content.

Nonetheless, how you write your content, how you choose your topics, and how you format your content, can have a significant bearing on your search engine rankings.

Over the years I have observed two types of problems that clients face:

  • Less search engine traffic.
  • Decent traffic but no business.

Less search engine traffic happens when content is not published regularly.

Decent traffic but no business happens when incorrect topics are chosen – topics that are not relevant to the target customers and clients.

Below I am listing a few reasons why your content may not be ranking well on search engines.

You are not choosing the topics your readers want

There is no direct connection between what you are publishing and what your readers are looking for.

This may result in your website attracting good traffic but not generating much business, or not generating traffic at all.

You need to have a clear idea of what people are searching for in relation with your business.

For my Credible Content blog I want to attract search engine traffic for the following topics

  • Content writing
  • Copywriting
  • SEO copywriting
  • SEO content writing
  • Email marketing copywriting
  • Social media marketing content writing

And such.

All my topics involved one of these expressions.

When you are writing content to improve your search engine rankings it is very important that in the topics you use the language and the expressions that are normally used by your target audience.

You are choosing topics that are too competitive

Are you writing on topics 25 other websites already rank on top?

It is normal tendency to want to write on topics that you are easily finding in search results thinking that they are in high demand.

Yes, they are in high demand, but many top-ranking websites have already occupied the top space for those topics.

SEO copywriting tips Google screenshot

SEO copywriting tips Google screenshot

Instead of going for very popular topics, use longtail keywords to come up with topics that are highly useful, but not very competitive.

For example, for me, it would be better to not write on “SEO copywriting tips”, but write on something like “10 SEO copywriting tips for beginners”.

I may attract fewer visitors, but at least, there is a chance I will get higher rankings for a less competitive title and there will be an audience for it.

You are not publishing content with greater frequency

This is important in the beginning when the Google search engine crawler hasn’t yet started crawling your website.

The crawling frequency depends on the frequency of content publishing.

The more often you publish, the greater is the frequency of the Google crawler.

If there is no routine, if you don’t publish content regularly, the crawler does not visit your website or blog regularly and hence your content is not included in the search engine index.

Even when it is included, it may take months before it can appear in search results.

So, what should be your content publishing frequency?

In the beginning, I would suggest, if your budget allows, two blog posts or web pages everyday.

I know, you may think it is too much, but if you want to improve your search engine rankings fast, then this is a good way to go.

Publishing twice and then submitting your URL to Google will get your content indexed faster.

You let Google know that your website is being updated with great frequency and hence, it should be crawled accordingly.

Once your content has begun to show up in search results, you can gradually reduce your frequency from two publications to one in a day.

It is recommended that you update your website at least 16 times every month even if you have good search engine traffic.

You are not using your keywords properly

How you use your keywords is very critical to the success of your search engine optimization campaign.

You need to use your keywords as exact phrase and as different parts.

Your main phrase must appear in the title of your web page or blog post.

For example, if I want to optimize my blog post for “SEO copywriting tips”, then this phrase must appear at least once in the title.

It can be a part of a bigger sentence or a bigger phrase, but it must be there.

Your main keyword must also appear within the first 100 words of your blog post, article, or web page.

There is a reason for that.

When search engine crawlers crawl your content, they may not get enough time to crawl the entire piece of content.

Midway they may leave for other sections of your website, or may even leave your website altogether.

Hence, use your main keyword in the beginning itself – this is because your main keyword represents the fundamental idea of what you are writing.

Without overusing, use different combinations of your main keyword (in my case, it would be “SEO”, “copywriting”, and “tips”) all over your text.

Use the exact phrase in some of the headings and subheadings.

If possible, also use the exact phrase at least once in bulleted points.

Also make sure you don’t over use your keyword.

In my case, instead of constantly using “SEO copywriting tips” I can use “writing tips”, “SEO writing”, “SEO tips” and “tips on SEO copywriting”.

With practice you learn to strike a balance.

You are publishing thin content

Most of the SEO experts recommend that your individual web pages and blog posts must be a 1000 words or more.

My blog posts average around 1000-1300 words.

Although Google considers less than 400 words as thin content, how many words you need depends on your competition.

If you run your longtail keyword through a tool like SEMRush it will tell you, based on your competitors, how many words your present blog post or web page must have to get a decent chance of ranking well.

Most of my clients ask for 800-1000 words, which is fine.

Personally, I believe, as long as you are publishing relevant content, there is no such thing as thin content.

Nonetheless, research has shown that the top 10 pieces of content that rank on Google, are more than 1000 words.

If, despite publishing regularly, your content is not ranking well, this could be one of the reasons.

For a couple of months, try publishing blog posts and web pages that are more than 1300 words.

Your Google click-through-ratio is low

Your search click-through-ratio is the number of times people click your link divided by the number of times your content appears in search results.

If, despite appearing in search results, fewer people are clicking your links, it tells the Google algorithm that the current rankings of your links are not solving their purpose, and as a result, your current rankings are lowered.

Therefore, despite the fact that sometimes your content is appearing in search results, just because people are not clicking your links, your rankings are lowered until they are way down the listings to be found.

Your bounce rate is high

I’m talking about the bounce rate in terms of traffic coming from search engines like Google.

Bounce rate means the number of people immediately leaving your website after finding your link on Google divided by the total number of people finding your link on Google, clicking it, and then coming to your website.

Google knows how much time people spend on your link once they find the link in search results.

If, after finding your link on search results and then clicking it, people hardly spend a few seconds on your web page or blog post, the Google algorithm assumes that your link doesn’t deserve its current rankings for the keyword it is showing up right now.

It assumes that the link does not have the information people are looking for, for the associated search term, and hence, your rankings are lowered.

These are a few factors that stop your content from ranking well on search engines.

There may be more factors that are directly in your control, or not in your control, but as far as your content goes, if you can take care of the above, you can significantly improve your search engine rankings.

8 types of headlines you can use in copywriting

8 categories of headlines you can use and copywriting

8 categories of headlines you can use and copywritingKasauli simple and syndicate the

Do you know that 8 out of 10 people read your headlines but only 2 out of 10 read your main copy?

Since 80% people are going to read your headline, you can make the maximum impact writing effective headlines.

Therefore, writing power packed headlines has always been a critical part of the copywriting process.

In fact, copywriters like Bob Bly and David Ogilvy suggest that out of the total time you get to write copy for a project, spend 50% time on coming up with an effective headline, and then remaining 50% for the main body content.

When writing copy, should you write your headline first?

There is debate regarding this among copywriters.

If you ask a content writer, he or she will tell you it hardly matters as long as the headline represents the main gist of the content they are writing.

Consequently, many content writers first work on the copy and then based on the contents of the copy, create the headline.

The same happens with headings and subheadings.

First, they quickly jot down whatever thoughts come to them and then later they format the document with a headline, headings, and subheadings.

It depends on your process.

I write the headline first.

This is because my entire copywriting and content writing process centers around the main headline.

I believe that once I have worked out the headline, it becomes easier to write the rest of the copy.

Even when writing headings and subheadings, given a choice, I write them first and then the subtext beneath them.

Headlines and headings are interchangeable.

The term headings are used in terms of formatting and document referencing, and headlines are used as general terms to draw attention from people.

Headlines improve your conversion rate

Whether you want to improve your click through ratio or on-page conversion rate, your headline plays an important role.

Websites like BuzzFeed and Upworthy spend lots of time and effort on headlines that draw massive amounts of traffic from social media websites and search engines like Google.

You may have seen that the quality of the primary BuzzFeed content is not great but their headlines shock, intrigue, and humor.

BuzzFeed headline example

BuzzFeed headline example

According to American Writers & Artists, there is a “Four U’s” approach to writing headlines.

Your headlines must

  • Be USEFUL to the readers.
  • Instill a sense of URGENCY in them.
  • Communicate to them that the message on the web page is UNIQUE.
  • ULTRA-SPECIFIC in nature to tell the readers precisely what you’re offering.

Questions to ask to write effective headlines

Want to write effective headlines?

Here are some questions that can help you write click-worthy headlines.

  • Does your headline offer a clearly understandable reward to the reader for reading the main copy?
  • Is your headline believable?
  • Does your headline contain specific facts that are easy to believe?
  • Does your headline figure a strong, actionable emotion?
  • Does your headline offer an answer to a question the reader is seeking?
  • Does your headline offer an irresistible proposition that is relevant to the needs of the reader?

Effective headlines can be of different types.

Listed below are eight types of headlines that popular copywriters and content writers often use.

Direct, straightforward headlines

Such headlines don’t beat around the bush.

  • 30% discount on our holiday package
  • Buy the custom printed T-shirt now and get 20% off.
  • Free e-book: Data visualization made easy

These headlines offer straightforward proposition.

There is no mincing of words.

There is no guesswork.

The reader immediately knows what is being offered.

Indirect headlines

Some examples of indirect headlines are

  • Stop eating this meal now; want to know why?
  • The future of technology is right at your doorstep – find out how
  • You are never going to get this chance again
  • This is how you should have used your phone in the first place

Why are these indirect headlines?

They simply intrigue your curiosity.

They don’t provide any information.

To make sense of these headlines, you need to read the copy that follows.

News headlines

You can learn a lot from news headlines because they are meant to make people read news.

In the olden days when newspapers were sold on the roads, their sales depended on the headlines.

In the newspaper industry, headlines were written so that the newspaper sellers could scream them and prompt people to buy the day’s newspaper.

Some examples of newspaper headlines are:

  • NASA launches a new probe to Mars
  • The government in Bihar falls, the 3rd time in 5 years
  • The corruption charges reveal an interdepartmental web of intrigue
  • Credible Content decides to put more stress on day-to-day content publishing

You can see that news headlines are like direct headlines with the big difference that they are about news and not about selling stuff.

How to headlines

These types of headlines are quite prevalent in the blogging world.

Even on my own Credible Content blog, I have written a number of blog posts on the theme of how to.

Some hypothetical examples of the “how to” headlines are:

  • How to hire the perfect copywriter for your website in 3 easy steps
  • How to make an omelet that is not hard on your stomach
  • How to write copy that instantly converts
  • How to improve your English writing skills in just 2 days

Question headlines

As the name suggests, a question headline asks a question from the reader.

Questions are always intriguing.

Whenever you come across a question, if you know the answer, you want to respond, and if you don’t know the answer, you want to know it, especially if it is relevant to your need.

Some examples of question-based headlines are

  • Are you looking for a content writer who understands your business?
  • Are you sick of your current accounting software?
  • Do you know that germs can be life threatening?

Command or action headlines

Such headlines directly tell people to take an action.

Strong action words are used in the beginning of the command or action headlines.

Some example:

  • Download our FREE e-book now
  • Avail 20% discount now
  • Subscribe to our newsletter today
  • Order your biryani today
  • Do command headlines work?

Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t.

It depends on your messaging.

My personal take is that such headlines work better as subheadings or call to action buttons.

Readers should be exposed to such headlines when they have already read a major portion of your copy.

‘N’ reasons why headlines

Such headlines have become popular in the age of web content.

First, a few examples:

  • 13 reasons why you want to use WordPress as your preferred blogging platform
  • 5 reasons why you must hire a trained copywriter for your business
  • 25 reasons why people are abandoning your shopping cart

“Reasons why” headlines can be very effective.

When people come across them, they know exactly how many points you are going to cover.

There is no magic figure.

Nonetheless, the grapevine is that odd numbers perform better than even numbers for “reasons why” headlines.

Testimonial headlines

Testimonials come from real people.

From real customers and clients.

Some examples:

  • Our business registered 5% growth after switching to this accounting software
  • Initially I was doubtful, but then I was blown away
  • They delivered a project in 2 weeks after committing to a deadline of 4 weeks

Testimonial headlines are easier to believe in.

Instead of you blowing your own horn or using some sort of verbal trickery, the customers and clients who have used your product or service themselves are vouching for you.

Listed above are the main categories of headlines that you can write for your web pages, blog posts, and articles.

Different headline categories may perform better in different situations.

No matter how great a copywriter you are, you need to experiment.