The best Internet headlines are those that are written for search engines. The chances of their being noticed multiplies if they use keywords that people are searching.
The question is: how do you find these keywords?
The answer is: use Google Adwords Search Tool.
The basic version of this search tool is free, and can be accessed at:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Enter the keyword that you want to use in the headline and search for it. The keyword tool will throw up the number of searches that have been made for that particular keyword during the last one month.
It will also display the searches made for related keywords. Select the keyword that is the most searched one and write your headline around it.
Here is how I wrote the headline for this post:
Step 1
I first wrote a headline that I thought best captured the spirit of the story. The headline was:
How to write a headline for search engines
Step 2
I then used the Google keyword tool, and found that the keyword headline had been searched 823,000 times in the past month. However, the keyword headlines had been searched 1.5 million times.
I therefore modified the headline to use the keyword headline in plural.
How to write headlines for search engines
Step 3
Since three-fourths of the world uses Google, I checked for the searches made for the keyword Google. It was an incredible 61.8 million. I therefore modified the headline to:
How to write headlines for Google
Step 4
Finally, since the article was on Internet headlines, I decided to check if people are searching for the term Internet headlines. I found that they were not. The searches for the keyword Internet Headline numbered a microscopic 480.
There was therefore no point in modifying the headline to include the keywords Internet headline.
You too can follow the same step-by-step approach and find visitors flooding your site.