What Makes a Good SEO Headline for News Sites?

In this Indiegraf webinar, Jessie Willms and Shelby Blackley from WTF is SEO? walk through SEO best practices for headline writing, including strategies for optimizing on Google platforms, common headline mistakes and how to fix them. 

What is a headline in SEO? 

Nine in 10 readers will only ever read the headline. The headline is an entry point to a story — it’s the first thing they see regardless of where they are. But most people won’t click. Audiences will scroll through content, either on search or in their social feeds, and they'll decide which one caters to their interests.

What is the purpose of headlines?

The goal is to get someone enticed enough to click on your headline. A reader should immediately understand the story and what they’ll get from it. It should excite curiosity and interest. Headlines also need to communicate the essential information of a story accurately and be interesting. 

“Something that’s fairly common in journalism is that reporters and editors will forget that not every reader knows exactly as much about a topic as you do, and that's why they're clicking on your story,” says Jessie. “Something to think about is, how can I keep this headline really simple and straightforward for someone who isn't an expert in the subject?”

In terms of SEO, headlines are vital for visibility and ranking across the Google ecosystem. When crafting a headline, it’s also important to make sure it’s showing up, or ranking for content and keywords relevant to the story. That'll actually help you stay in search longer, be more engaging and achieve business goals — whether that’s driving subscriptions, conversions or readers. 

SEO best practices: The must-follow headline rules

There are a lot of different things that go into best practices when it comes to your headlines. What you choose to do will also depend on your audience, environment, and location. Here are a few must-follow practices: 

• Headlines should be concise and keyword-targeted.
• Headlines should be around 70-90 characters.
  • Google cuts off headlines in organic results based on pixel width (600px). 
  • Depending on the Google surface, the space changes.
• Always keep it concise. It’s not a sentence.
• Keep keywords to the left. Front-load headline so the intent is clear and doesn’t get cut off.
• Keywords should be early.

“You want to write for the reader. This is always my number one key piece of advice,” says Shelby. 

When it comes to SEO overall, remember that you’re not writing for Google or a robot. You’re writing for people who use Google as a tool to find information about a certain topic or a certain situation.

There are a lot of things going on in the world, so you want to make sure that you’re writing for readers to help them get the information that they're looking for. Consider human emotions and what readers are looking for before trying to optimize a headline for Google.

Watch Our On-Demand Webinar: "SEO 101 for Journalists & Publishers" – Featuring WTF is SEO?

How to write good headlines for Google’s main platforms

The five headlines Google cares about 

There are five different headlines that you can optimize for Google, and what the platform cares about or what it'll look at. They're going to be found in different places based on the platform or where the headline is showing up for the reader. 

• Visible/on-page headline: The <h1> tag (70-90 characters)
• Structured data headline: Headline attribute in markup
• The <title> tag: The SEO title (55-65 characters) 
• Open Graph Title: For social and commonly used on Discover 
• Internal link headline: What’s on homepage, navigation, etc.
  

It’s entirely possible you don’t have all these fields set up in your content management system but you can still have great visibility on search without all five. Focus on quality engaging headlines. 

For more information on writing headlines for Google, read “The 5 Article Headlines Google Cares About” by Barry Adams from SEO for Google News. 

Headline tools and hacks

Jessie Willms and Shelby Blackley emphasized that tools can assist – but never replace – editors who write headlines. There are a ton of tools to help with SEO and headlines but it’s important to remember that no tool can replace an editor with years of experience and expertise in crafting sharp headlines. 

Here are a few tools that provide suggestions and can help you follow SEO best practices:

• Google Trends: Find the right keywords for headlines using search interest insights.
• Trends with Glimpse: Find useful questions/keywords to incorporate into headlines (and subheadings). You can also filter by “growth” to get ahead of a trend.
• SEO Pro Extension: Determine the length of the title tag.
• YESEO: AI-powered headline analysis and suggestions – in Slack! 
• ChatGPT: Helpful when a headline is too long or needs a specific tone.
• Character Count Online
• SEOMofo (Google SERP Simulator)
• Ahrefs’ Free AI Title Generator
• Monster Insights Headline Analyzer

How to avoid common headline mistakes

The most common headline errors

Here are the top most common headline mistakes that you should avoid: 

1. Special characters: The “&” and “;” characters can trip up Google when it's trying to understand what's going on in your headline. You should only use those special characters if it’s absolutely necessary. Sometimes “:” will cause half the headline to get cut off
2. Lack of specificity: Specificity missing in a headline is a huge problem across the board. Google needs you to be explicit about the topic. Make sure that you're including all the relevant keywords or entities. Multiple headline fields are helpful here to cater to all audiences. 
3. Headlines are too long: Long titles get cut off in Top Stories — be concise. Use tools to get your character count back down in reasonable limits.
4. Identical headlines: Often for recurring features (“Today’s crossword”) don’t have unique information (like the date). Include classifiers that differentiate templates/recurring content. Make sure that every single headline published on your website is unique.

“If you’re still struggling with the headline, iterate, iterate, iterate,” says Jessie. “The first headline that you come up with might not necessarily be the strongest, and the headline that you publish with might not be the thing that really makes this piece of journalism land with your readers. Feel encouraged to look at the initial launch, metric and publication data about whether or not a story is landing with your audience.”

What to do right now to improve your headlines

1. Audit important headlines

Audit the important headlines depending on the type of publication you are. You may be a local site that only publishes 2-3 stories a day but you may have one main story every single day. Look at the headlines every morning as they're being published and answer questions like: 

• Do they have the “right” keywords? 
• Are they placed properly in there?
• Do they fit the character count? 
• Can you A/B test your headlines — even informally?
• Do you feel engaged when you're reading the story?
• Are the headlines all unique?

2. Create a Slack channel for headline brainstorming and track what works

If your team uses communication platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams, create a channel where you can discuss headlines. You can make a thread for each headline and get editors involved. This allows you to workshop together and get to the best headline. A good exercise is to nail down two options and A/B test (informal or with a tool) — can you identify why the better headline worked?

“You always want to keep reiterating why something does well and feedback is so good for editors and writers because they want to hear why something's doing great,” says Shelby. 

3. Start a document to track success 

Start a shared document to note the headlines that worked and track success by including screenshots and key stats, like the CTR. Record if there’s a specific headline that just keeps working well, and you see it climbing and climbing every single day. You can also include screenshots of it showing up in certain places.

WTF is SEO? is a newsletter about search for publishers. Subscribe to get their newsletter every Monday. You can also send them questions at seoforjournalism@gmail.com or join the conversation in the Slack community.