Headlines Are Made of Popular Words
Yahoo! has published a style guide. "It's Strunk and White for the online world," said Arianna Huffington. They really do explain how the web works! For example, they explain how people make headlines.
There are some things to know, first: "if you're writing a serious story about a natural disaster, the headline should not be frivolous." That is true; we have all gone wrong there! Then it goes a little something like this:
If you have done keyword research for your page, you already know the words to target. Otherwise, ask yourself which words you would use in a search to find this story. Proper nouns-the names of people, places, and things-are good. Avoid abbreviations, because people tend to spell out words in searches. Then use those five or six keywords in a short sentence, which you will later trim to headline length.
Example
Your keywords
Fab-U-Loz Chocolate, baby boomers, heart attack prevention, longevity
Draft sentence
Study finds Fab-U-Loz Chocolate prevents heart attacks in baby boomers.
Now you can have a website too!









Being attractive is the most important thing there is. If you wanna catch the biggest fish in your pond, you have to be as attractive as possible.
Gen X/Y cred! That'll get you pageviews from people with no disposable income.
catch, popular, quarterback, cheerleader
[I'm Feeling Lucky]
@heinous naDUH
The question here seems like whether it's better or worse that Google doesn't let you get away with just putting a bunch of keywords in invisible text at the bottom of your homepage. I guess design is nicer, but I always get the disconcerting sense when I check Huffpo that it's accidentally been replaced with a feed from PR Newswire.
Here is an actual headline that appeared on a Yahoo! news article last week: "Woman, black pursue GOP nods and possibly history." And yes, they do intend for you to fill in the indefinite articles thus: "A woman and a black." That headline is still there, by the way. Strunk and White would be proud.
Also, spell Michael "Micheal" for more visits.
So headline writing=Sarah Palin speech writing. Got it!
I thought it was Strunk and Wagnalls.