The Internet’s Most used Words That Make Headlines go Viral

One good method we can use in comprehending the characteristics of viral headlines on the internet, is to observe the words that appear in the titles of contents at the top of search engines like google which is linked to blogs, websites or web pages that have very high volumes of traffic. The next thing is to try and figure out what has made them so attractive to the internet audience. (I don’t think there is any other better way to comprehend the attractive ability behind viral headlines.) Although the internet’s readers attraction to titles and articles could depend a lot on – feelings, time period, level of interest, and many other things which can’t be controlled, the following categories of specific words were observed to be influential in making headlines go viral:

Words that “point” to a specific person, thought or thing

Direct examples of such words include: “the”, “that”, “this” and “a”. The attractive power of these words lies in how they “go straight to a particular target”. When you place those words (in combination with other words) in any headline, your reader will be instantly directed towards forming a specific idea about how particular (the, a), how close (this), how far away (that), or how insignificant a person, thought or thing might be to any character. In the course browsing the internet, up to getting attracted by a headline, and reading through an article – a reader will clearly conceive what they are directed to think about in order to comprehend the content surrounding it.

Words that “refer” to a thing, a person, or a group of persons                

Direct examples of such words include: “you”, “your” and “people”. I believe that the number one target of creating content is to give useful information to a reader (a person, or persons): this gives a convincing reason why viral headlines have these particular words in them. The word “you” was once ranked as the fifth most used word on the internet, while “your” was once ranked as the seventeenth most used word. What does the popularity of these words mean? It means that their aim is tied to giving value to the reader – or to many readers (people). A research that was carried out using different headline compositions, discovered that headlines consisting of these words (you, your and people) were the most efficient.

Words that are used to ask for information about anything

Direct examples of such words are: “why”, “where”, “what”, “which”, and “when”. One similar effect that these words create is that they arouse questions within its readers’ minds, thus making them (the readers) delve further towards specific things, and creating an expectation of obtaining a clear meaning or explanation. It has been observed that by structuring headlines to appear as questions, click-rates typically increase. An inquiry into – “why”, “where”, etc, is attractive to readers because it creates the interest in them to acquire knowledge and cover up ground in areas where they are deficient: it makes readers to click on links having these words, in order to learn something new.