How to Write SEO Headlines That Rank (+ 9 Powerful Templates)

Your SEO headline is crucial for standing out in search and generating clicks to your site.

Writing great headlines can help you generate more traffic—a lot more.

In this guide, you’ll learn what turns a good headline into a great headline and how to write them in just six steps. Plus, get a set of powerful templates you can use to write compelling headlines for every page on your site.

What Is an SEO Headline?

The SEO headline refers to the title that’s shown when a page appears in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

The headline can be optimized and carefully crafted to rank higher in search results. This increases the page’s visibility and can help generate more clicks from search engines (also known as organic traffic).

In many cases, the headline shown in search results will match the HTML <title> tag added to the header of the page.

This title tag is the page’s official title and what appears in the browser window or tab when the page is open.

But the SEO headline is not always the same as the page’s title tag.

In some cases, Google may choose to display the H1 tag as the SEO headline.

The H1 tag on your page will often match the page’s title. But, again, they don’t have to match. Your page’s H1 is an independent HTML element—meant to contain the main headline for the page’s content.

Finally, Google will sometimes create a totally new SEO headline that appears in the SERP rather than using either the title or H1.

We’ll cover this in the Dealing with...