6 Strategies for Writing Compelling Headings

I hate to admit that I still have stumbling blocks after decades of writing experience, but, ummm, I do. It’s writing headings. There! I wrote it down—in a public blog post.

If you have the same struggle, I can share some advice and tips with you. No need to go heading-less!

Headings are important because they serve as guideposts to our written content. When effective, they help our readers locate and conceptualize the information they seek from our organizations. (Remember when I wrote about scannability?) Effective headings are especially important in online content, where they continue to feed web search engines, even Google’s.  

Note that Google Search’s March 2024 core update attempts to assess a piece of content’s quality so that our search results contain fewer meaningless clickbait. This puts more pressure on content creators to develop original, helpful online content – including meaningful first- and second-level headings.

Those are strong motivators, right? So why is writing a good heading sooo hard?

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