The headline…it’s overlooked a lot. Yet, it’s the first thing visitors will notice about your website. If users are in search, they’ll see that big blue headline first. If they’re actually on your site, it’s the first thing they’ll see at the top of the page.

Your headline determines whether searchers click through to your website, and if they’ve already made it there, if they’ll read all the way to the bottom. Well, maybe that’s a stretch, but it does play a role in whether or not that will happen. Website pages with longer engagement times, more click-throughs, and lower bounce rates experience better rankings in search. So, your page’s headline is quite a powerful thing that shouldn’t be overlooked.

What makes one headline score more clicks than another? BuzzSumo wondered the same thing and thus performed research on 100 million headlines. Here are some of the highlights:

• The 3 Most Popular Phrases Used the Start Headlines

BuzzSumo’s research isolated these three phrases as the most popular with respect to starting headlines:
X reasons why…
X things you…
This is what…

Why do the first two work? List-based posts have always worked well…even before the internet. When magazines, newspapers, and other print content ruled the day, marketers knew this. After all, people just love knowing how much stuff they’ll learn before they decide to engage with the content.

“This is what…” is likely effective because it arouses curiosity, which is typically the leading emotion used when marketing to consumers.

By the way, the most engaging numbers used in headlines are 10, 5, and 15: in that order.

• How Many Words Long Should Your Headline Contain?

Shorter is better, isn’t it? Not with headlines. BuzzSumo’s research found the most shareworthy headlines contain 12-18 words—with an ideal number of 15. Interestingly, this actually falls almost perfectly on a normal curve.

If you’re setting out to clearly introduce a topic and communicate exceptional value, headlines require more words.

• All That Said, You Must Research Your Niche

People in any niche respond to specific headlines best. At this point, the web is so saturated with great content and engaging headlines that you can research what works quite easily.

BuzzSumo offers free 14-day trials and has a tool that allows you to enter in a top website URL within your niche and instantly find the articles that receive the most shares—helping you learn which headlines and topics work best.

We don’t have any kind of business affiliation with BuzzSumo, so please don’t assume this is some sort of promotional advertisement. Rather, it’s simply an extremely useful tool for researching the most popular content in any niche.