

One thing that virtually every guide on headline writing agrees on is that numbers work, and big obscure numbers work the best. The value of doing this is not necessarily the fact that you end up with a 1.5% increase in click through rate, but more that you learn very quickly what headline formats work well, and how important it is to test assumptions. I use a dead simple WordPress plugin called Title Split Testing to create a bunch of headline variations for every post I write. The best way to learn what makes a good headline is to have the opportunity to split test them. They simply write a large number of variations and let science pick the winner. Upworthy doesn’t care about poor grammar, headline length, or any headline writing conventions for that matter. Every post published to Upworthy has 25 different headlines that are A/B tested to find the one that’s most clickable and shareable. Want to know Upworthy’s secret to reaching 80,000,000 unique visits per month? They write more headline variations than anyone else. So, how can you write better headlines today? 1. It’s the technology that’s changed – and the headline formats are simply adapting to these new technologies. As human beings, we haven’t really changed. So what constitutes a good headline these days? I’ve listed some of the key components below, but I want to first clarify that none of the fundamentals of headline writing have changed. Headlines now need to be all of the above, as well as being shareable and extremely clickable. Today we’re experiencing another shift led by social behaviour. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” - David Ogilvy “Five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. With the shift towards search-based discovery, the headline also had to take keywords into consideration. In the days of print, it served the purpose of catching the eye.

Over the years, the function of the headline has evolved.
