How to best optimize the 5 headline fields

Each headline element can cater to a specific audience and platform, giving publishers a competitive advantage

Mar 10, 2025

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Hello, and welcome back. Shelby here, back from a wonderful weekend full of family, fun and love. I went back to my hometown to celebrate my cousin’s fiancé’s beautiful bridal shower at a winery before hitting up the local Royal Canadian Legion for beers with my parents and their friends. There’s nothing more exhilarating than winning the Saturday draw for an LCBO gift card (the liquor store for our non-Ontario friends).

This week: Optimizing the 5 headline fields! Each headline element can cater to a specific audience and platform, giving publishers a competitive advantage. We explain and provide optimization tips for each headline field.

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In this issue:

What are the 5 headline fields?
Why is it important to optimize the
Considerations for each headline field

THE 101

What are the five headline fields?

Headlines are the most important text on an article. It's the reader's first introduction to a story, and in a volatile, competitive landscape, it could make or break the performance of an article on Google.

There are five major headline fields that can impact an article’s performance in Google’s ecosystem. These are:

The on-page visible headline;
The title tag;
The structured data headline;
The open graph title;
The internal link/homepage headline.

Experts have differing perspectives on naming conventions and how much influence each headline field has. That said, everyone agrees that publishers who optimize these effectively gain a competitive advantage.

Why is it important to optimize each of the five headlines?

Optimizing all of the headline fields ensures that you are catering to each referral channel that can drive traffic to your site — even outside of Google.

It helps key in on each platform and its unique audience. For example, Google Discover is more like a social platform where aspirational headlines with a curiosity gap perform better, whereas keyword-targeted headlines work better for organic search.

Not every content management system (CMS) has multiple headline fields. For many, it may only be possible to optimize one headline that affects all places a story can show up. That’s entirely okay — it’s not necessary to optimize all five, but it is definitely a benefit.

If you don’t have the capability, consider adding a step in your workflow. Is this a search story or better for Discover? Write the headline for the audience you think it is most likely to hit with.

🔗 Read more: The 5 headlines Google cares about by Barry Adams

How to optimize the five headline fields

There are specific tactics for each headline field, but always keep in mind your newsroom's best practices for SEO. Ultimately, headlines need to be engaging and drive readers to your site.

The on-page visible headline

What is it: The headline at the top of the page. It should be wrapped in a <h1> heading tag. This can be pulled into Google’s Top Stories box, even if it’s different from the title tag, and is often used for Google News, too.

Keys to optimizing: This is the main headline for your users and the first interaction with the story on-page. Focus on traditional headline best practices. Length should be between 65-76 characters and never more than 100. Include targeted keywords near the front of the headline. Add the year if it’s a recurring event each year (i.e., Oscars 2025). Avoid branded franchise names or author names. Add intrigue, like using “how” or “why”, which tend to do well in search.

The on-page headline, which is wrapped in a <h1> tag.

The title tag

What is it: The headline that shows in the tab of a webpage, usually in a <title> tag. Often also called the “SEO title” because it was historically the main headline considered for ranking. Often the headline in organic search (aka the blue link) and usually in Top Stories. The title tag is the default for SEO, so it’s the one you should expect to see in search the most.

Keys to optimizing: Again, focus on headline best practices. The title tag cuts off in search results around 55-65 characters, so write headlines with targeted keywords as close to the front as possible. It’s also in the tab of the webpage on browsers, which can help readers guide through their (realistically, one thousand) tabs (not SEO, but a nice-to-consider).

What the title tag looks like in the HTML source code.

The structured data headline

What is it: Title found in the `headline` attribute of the NewsArticle/Article/BlogPosting structured data markup on a page. It's not a requirement, but is increasingly a factor for ranking in Top Stories or features like AI Overviews.

Keys to optimizing: While there’s no character limit, it will cut off depending on the platform where it surfaces. Since this headline field is quite influential for Top Stories consideration, ensure it is engaging with the proper keywords early. For a live blog, each individual post has its own headline attribute in the schema, so you can inclusive those subheadings in the liveBlogUpdate markup.

For a single post in a live blog, the headline attribute takes that subheading over the main article’s headline.

The open graph title

What is it: Headline found in the `og:title` property in the Open Graph meta tags. Often used on Google Discover and social feeds like Facebook and Twitter (or X) for social card promotion, as these sites tend to be looking for more aspirational, clickbait headlines.

Keys to optimizing: Stay within the character limit of 50-75 characters, and never above 100. Focus less on keywords, but more on the curiosity gap. Be more feature-y, aspirational and “clickbaity,” but don’t write an inaccurate headliner. Use words that make a person stop scrolling and decide to spend time on your article.

In the HTML source code, the open graph title is shown in the og:title property.

The internal link/homepage headline

What is it: The headline displayed when an article is featured on the homepage, a section or linked for further reading. This is one way Google finds articles by crawling links. Googlebot crawls the link and uses the headline, which is also the anchor text, to gather clues to interpret the story’s contents. Internal linking is still so incredibly important to Google that it’s essential that this text is optimized.

How to optimize: Length depends on your site's design and layout. Shorter is definitely better here. Always think, “what is the most important information that will drive click-through?” Be direct and concise if it’s news; spark curiosity and engagement if it’s a feature or analysis. Ensure the text includes a key term to help with Google’s interpretation of topic relevance.

The NFL free agency live blog’s homepage headline (bottom right) is straightforward and much shorter than its on-page headline.

🔗 Read more: Top 5 news headlines every article should have and optimize by NewzDash

It's Google's world — we're just living in it

Sometimes, despite trying to cater to a specific platform, Google will choose the headline it thinks has the best potential in SERPs. In the example below, ESPN's article on the NFL free agency trade grades is featured twice — once in Top Stories and once as a blue link. The organic link uses the main <title> tag, but the headline used in the news box is actually the open graph title, not used in any other headline field. This is a great example of how Google will sometimes deviate entirely from its guidelines and choose a headline that it feels will drive the most engagement — so, make sure all headline fields are optimized.

The Top Stories carousel is using the open graph title for ESPN’s article, while the organic link uses the <title> tag.

The bottom line: Each headline field is an added benefit in a very complicated, saturated and competitive environment. If your CMS allows, consider having your tech team implement fields for these five headlines. If this is not a capability, just ensure you’re making the headline fields you do have as engaging and optimized as possible.

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