The following is a short excerpt from a longer post in the members only section of the Magnetic Web Content forums.
Travel is a very competitive area, but it is also a very rich area for content. A lot of the most obvious headlines get used over and over, one reason for this is because they work.
However, we want links and the people we are looking to get links from are a savvy bunch and have pretty much seen everything before, so you need to be innovative and interesting.
To me, a great headline is one that has familiarity but takes you in a completely different direction.
These example headlines – which you can use as you will, are focussed on UK Hotels.
UK Ghost boosts hotel bookings
I’m going to assume you know nothing of headlines, but one example is that a headline, “Dog bites man”, is not interesting, whereas, “Man bites dog” is. “Hotel increases its bookings” as a headline is boring, having a ghost is mildly interesting, but having the bookings go through the roof because of some spectral visitation makes it a little more interesting.
UK Hotel bookings soar on ghost sightings
From an seo perspective it may help if “UK hotel is at the beginning of the headline, it makes it more difficult to make the headline interesting, but should always be attempted as the headline will invariably make up the anchor text and therefore effect the SERPS.
Apple Mac owner haunts UK Hotel
Did I tell you that the ghost is of a previous hotel guest who was killed by his wife when she threw her Apple Mac into his bath? Obviously what I am trying to do here is to attract the digg crowd. Different headlines should be considered for different social bookmarking sites, appealing to the interests of the users of those sites.
If you think I’m making this story up as I go along you would be right, I’m pretty much writing this as it comes into my head. Is it a true story? No, of course not. I find it a very successful technique to come up with a killer headline first and then craft a story around that headline.
………. this article continues in its full form at Magnetic Web Content