Your Essential Guide to Creating Killer Subheaders for Web Content
This post was updated in January 2019. You spend hours perfecting your web content. You create a headline that’s unique, urgent, and ultra-specific. Like Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel, you carefully craft your content with gentle but passionate effort. When you’re done, your blog is flawless. In fact, it’s beautiful. It answers your audience’s needs, questions, and problems. It’s entertaining. There’s nothing like it online. So why are people still clicking the back button like it’ll save their lives? The answer is you may be doing something wrong that hugely affects your blog’s readability – and that is writing dull subheaders. Your Essential Guide to Creating Killer Subheaders for Web Content – Table of Contents Why Amazing Content Isn’t Enough to Prevent Your Readers from Running How Subheaders Can Attract More Readers to Your Blog 10 Mistakes That Weaken Subheaders for Web Content Five Easy Steps to Compelling Subheaders for Web Content Are Your Subheaders Good Enough to Reduce Your Bounce Rate? [bctt tweet=”You can call your web content the best one you’ve made so far. But why is your bounce rate still high? You might have missed polishing your subheaders! Read this essential guide to creating killer subheaders by @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”] Why Amazing Content Isn’t Enough to Prevent your Readers from Running The web isn’t your local library. And people don’t go online to ponder upon beautifully written sentences. For instance, imagine yourself clicking a website and seeing a huge block of text like this. Source: Amazon Jeet Thayil’s novel is a deep, thought-provoking work. However, it requires a quiet corner and hours of time to read and ponder on. Online, it’s not about reading for pleasure. It’s about finding a solution to a problem in the shortest time possible. So no matter how helpful your content is, people won’t read it if you present it in a long block of text. This is why amazing content isn’t enough to keep readers from bouncing. You need amazing content and an amazing way to present it. The solution? Divide your text into sections with attention-grabbing subheaders. [bctt tweet=”An amazing web content allows people to find the solution to a problem in the shortest time possible. They don’t have the time to scan through a huge wall of text! So it’s important to use subheaders. ” username=”ExpWriters”] How Subheaders Can Attract More Readers to Your Blog Here’s the cool part. Subheaders can do more for you than just prevent your readers from running when they see long blocks of text on your page. In fact, they can get you even more readers! This is because of how Google’s web crawlers work. Users search for information, products, and help on Google using chosen keywords. What crawlers do is come up with relevant sites that have the content these users are looking for. On your part, it’ll help when you add relevant keywords to your content. But did you know that where you put these keywords is as important as which keywords you use? That’s right. Google crawlers pay extra attention to website headings and subheadings. When you plant your keywords in them, you improve your SEO ranking considerably. The result? More people finding your blog and reading it! [bctt tweet=”Besides making your content more readable, subheaders can bring more readers to your site – especially if you’ve added the right, relevant keywords.” username=”ExpWriters”] 10 Mistakes That Weaken Subheaders for Web Content While your first instinct might be to cut up your content and slap on any keyword-rich subheader you can think of above each section, don’t do that. Why? Your subheaders are the glue that will compel people to read your whole post. Think of them as your mini headlines. While your curiosity-piquing headline sucked people into your blog, it’s the job of your subheadings to suck people into every section of your blog. Subheadings have the power to compel your readers to keep reading until the end of your post. That is if they’re done right. But a ton of things could go wrong with your subheadings. Here are 10 of them. 1. Forgetting Your Blog’s Promise Readers come to your blog because your headline promised them something. For instance, take a look at this headline from Healthline. Readers click on this headline because it promises them something specific: They’ll get relief from a toothache without visiting a dentist. Now, see the subheadings listed below? Each one of them is in line with the blog’s promise. Imagine what would happen if you wrote a subheading like The History of Toothaches. You got it. Readers won’t go that far on your blog. 2. Turning Subheadings into Content Spoilers Subheadings can be tricky. You want to keep them in line with your blog’s main promise. BUT you don’t want them to give too much away. Look at this example: When readers see this subheading, they won’t need to read the content you write under it. They already know everything it’ll say. Now, what about this subheading? This subheading still delivers on the promise of your blog. However, it’s just a sneak peek that encourages readers to get into your content. When they continue reading, they learn that the secret ingredient for outstanding subheadings is uniqueness. 3. Being Too Dry Putting emotion into your writing always works. Why? Because readers come to your blog with their own complex feelings. For instance, think of a small business owner who’s going bankrupt. What emotion is he feeling? Maybe it’s fear, hopelessness, or desperation. When he goes online and finds your blog, he takes these emotions with him. What you need to do with your subheadings is to offer alternative emotions. For instance, “The Unexpected Lifeline That Saved My Doomed Business” is full of hope, courage, and optimism. These emotions will keep your businessman reading until the end of your post. If you want to test your subheadings for emotion, try AMI Institute’s Free Headline Analyzer. 4. Overdoing Creativity Creativity is good, but not all the … Read more
