Headline how many words

From several studies about headlines, Greenberg claimed that longer headlines often result in higher engagement. What Greenberg meant is that the key indicator of engagement had to do with the number of context words in the headline. A longer sentence with several context words pulled more than a short sentence with just one or two.

It must be a singular thought or coherent idea that creates an experience. Your brain stalls for a micro second on a context word, and if the next few words can offer more context, engagement increases. When your headline has several context words, your chances of holding attention also increases.

Think of this in terms of SEO. The more keywords that are found result in a higher position in the search results. And if we like the short description around that keyword, we click. Digital has changed how we use keywords. Take digital resumes. In the past, a one-page resume was required so that the recruiter could process and understand your qualifications without be overwhelmed and lose interest.

But with digital search algorithms for recruiting, a LinkedIn profile can be several pages long and packed with all the right keywords. If you follow the paradigm of the past and create a LinkedIn profile that resembles a one-page resume, you are hurting your chances of being discovered.

To increase your chances, you should use as many context words as possible, while maintaining a solid story of your experience. Because after the initial search, a real person is going to review your profile and a page of unconnected keywords will suddenly ruin your chances of recruitment. This is how context words work with your subconscious.

Like a recruiting algorithm, your subconscious can quickly scan headlines in search for emotionally charged words. If it finds several of these context words tied together in a big idea, it will be more engaged. But people scan headlines. In a separate article by Kissmetrics, [ii] they found that the ideal length of a headline is all about scan-ability. Here is what they had to say about headline length. Usability research shows that people not only scan body copy, but headlines as well — and they tend to take in only the first and last 3 words.

This suggests the perfect length for a headline is 6 words. And I have it on good authority that some of the highest-converting headlines on the web are as long as 30 words. But let me suggest that rather than worrying about length you should worry about making every word count. Especially the first and last 3 — and if that means using the passive voice, so be it. People certainly scan headlines, and their advice to make the first three and last three words count is fantastic.

Exactly — ones that contain keywords from your organic search. In this case, we would be more focused on title tags and meta descriptions SEO because these things are what appear on the search engine result pages SERPs. If this pertains to you, make sure you customize your title tag and meta description to match popular keyword searches. If your headline is the star of the show during an organic search, then you need to tread a bit more carefully. This means you should be aware of your keyword making an appearance before you hit the character limit, OR you should just stay within the character limit.

As you can probably imagine, the best way to measure the success of a headline through social media is to gauge the amount of shares and click-throughs. Instead of creating headlines that can fit into a title tag, like with search engines, you want to create headlines that invoke curiosity and get people to click.

Your best option here is to put a neon sign above your headline — also known as:. The key is to not overthink it and make your headline too complex, but you want to be able to boggle your readers enough to click and learn more.

However, with email, you are usually focusing more on what is going in the email subject line. Email subject line length preference really depends on your own, personal preference. The reason your subject lines are more difficult for finding the perfect length is because results vary from marketing team to marketing team. On the other hand, we did our own research , and found that email subject lines with around 50 characters got the best results.

Simply put, there may not be a solid answer, and you may just have to play around with your subject lines every time.

The subject-line world is your oyster! Before you get out there and go crazy on your subject lines, keep in mind that open rates and click-through rates are not the same thing. In this situation, click-through rates are important, and these are the numbers that you should really care about being high. What do you think? Are you ready to get out there and give these tips a try? The truth is: the only way you can understand what YOU need to create the best headline and craft the perfect headline length is to try these ideas out on your own.

Go explore and discover your next big win with your best headline yet! But 40 is the magic number that Jeff Bullas found was most effective in his study of retail brands on Facebook. Many different studies over the years have confirmed that shorter posts are better on Facebook. One such study by BlitzLocal looked at nearly billion Facebook impressions and found that performance tailed off as posts grew longer.

Their particular data found significant advantages to question posts between to characters. Here is an example of what we mean.

The post below had a headline exceeding 60 characters and got bumped. Write a superb first sentence. Digging further, Quintly found the largest spike in engagement at posts of 5 characters in length and the second-highest spike in posts of characters. According to a post by KISSmetrics, you might not have read it all. As such, we tend to absorb only the first three words and the last three words of a headline.

If you want to maximize the chance that your entire headline gets read, keep your headline to six words. Of course, six-word headlines are rare and hard to write! As the KISSmetrics post says:. And I have it on good authority that some of the highest-converting headlines on the web are as long as 30 words. But let me suggest that rather than worrying about length you should worry about making every word count.

Especially the first and last three. When measuring the content that performs best on their site, Medium focuses not on clicks but on attention. How long do readers stick with an article? In this sense, an ideal blog post would be one that people read. To arrive at this number, Medium measured the average total seconds spent on each post and compared this to the post length. All Medium posts are marked with a time signature for how long the read should be.

And there we have it: the average total seconds rises for longer posts, peaks at seven minutes, and then declines. A photo-heavy post could bring the average down closer to 1, They looked at the top 10 results on search results pages and counted the words in each article. Their data included text in the sidebars of posts, so you can knock a few words off of the totals below.

Upworthy cited factors like type of posts and audience as a couple of possible explanations for the discrepancy. If you put in the effort, so will your audience. I know, I know. Social media expert Derek Halpern found that there are a pair of very important, underlying factors that go into the width of your content:. The starting point in …. Many new marketers get nervous at the idea of issuing press releases. They think it is something for only big …. Search for:. Press Release Writing Tips.

By: Anthony Santiago.