The single most important element of your website's copy is headline. Take away practically everything else and you can still manage a sale (if headline's good enough and you have a strong enough call to action). But take away headline and your chances for any success are about zero.

Why is this?

Simply put, your headline is magnet for your copy. It's “door” through which people enter your world of persuasion. Make it appealing enough and theyll step through door. Fail to make it appealing and they'll walk on by.

If you want to pull in customers, you need to be able to write good headlines. And in order to write good headlines, you need to understand a few fundamental principles of craft. Here are 3 quick tips for writing better headlines for your website. Take these to heart and you'll find writing headlines a lot less painful.

1. Understand true purpose of a headline

First off, you need to have a clear understanding of what your headline is doing there. From all confusion I see on websites, it's safe to say that many people don't understand purpose of having a headline up there in first place.

So what is purpose of a headline?

Your headline's basic purpose is to get reader interested enough to continue reading.

Not to make sale. Not to be clever or artistic. Not to offer a riddle for them to solve.

It's just to get them into your copy so they'll read next thing after your headline!

Think of your headline as first step in a journey. Taking a journey is a pretty major thing. People don't do it lightly. They have to genuinely believe they'll get something worthwhile out of reading your copy before they'll take plunge.

Readers come in all shapes and sizes, since they're people plain and simple, after all. But in general, readers of your copy have certain basic characteristics. A big one for your website copy's purposes is “skimmer” mentality.

Most people are “skimmers”. I'm sure you skim a lot yourself. I know I do regularly. Very few of us are willing to sit down and read every word in every ad or newspaper story or magazine article just for fun of it. So we glance at headline quickly and decide in a split second whether or not we're going to continue reading. If it's compelling enough and clear enough, we'll read more.

Assume that every person who comes to your website will only skim your headline. Even if your reader is most perfect prospect you could possibly find for your product or service, they'll most likely still skim read your headline.

So you need to work out specific strategies and tactics for getting these skimmers' attention.

2. Get their attention and target a strong emotion

There are three standard ways to get attention with your headline. These have been proven by copywriters for many decades now.

In their order of effectiveness they are:

1. Go after your prospect's self-interest 2. Offer your prospect news 3. Try to arouse your prospect's curiosity

When you do web research using keywords, do you generally have to read anywhere from 4-7 articles on one particular topic before finding one written by an intelligent human being? SEO abuse is making it more and more difficult to locate people with real expertise and valuable insights. It's a growing problem, to say least. But in terms of information-gathering, how do we pick through chaff and get to gold?

Use Specialized Terms in Your Keyword Search

When I'm in research mode, in addition to keywords, I use specific and/or specialized terms in my web searches. This helps me scope out authors with real knowledge as opposed to BS artist looking to make a quick buck. It works for me, and it can work for you as well.

For example, let's say you're a writer, and you want to learn proper protocol for submitting a query letter. If you search using words 'query letter,' know what's going to come up? A million and one hits, majority of which will be ads, which serve no purpose if you're trying to learn something new. But if you type in 'query letter' and 'format' and 'cover page' all in same search box, you may be able to find some really helpful information from publishing experts who know everything there is to know about query letters.

Make Sure Your Specialized Terms are Still Considered Special

It's worth noting that specialized terms often evolve into keywords as their meaning becomes widespread. Unfortunately, as evolve in popularity, they devolve with respect to informational value.