Are your articles making great money for you? If they're not, the headline may be at fault. Discover how to write great headlines, and cash in on your articles.

In a sense, the headline is the most important part of your article: you must attract attention. However, there are other things you need to keep in mind too.

Before we get into tips which will help you, let's mention search engine optimization. To be read, web articles must be found by the search engines and returned in the search results. This means that you need to include your keyword in the title. There's lots more to search engine optimization, but when it comes to headlines, remember you to include your keyword.

1. What's the Response? Decide What You Want Readers to Do

Before you worry about the headline, decide what you want readers to do as a result of reading your article. If you're being paid to write an article by someone else, ask them what they want the reader to do.

You can't write a headline or any part of the article without having the response clear in your own mind.

2. Easy Headlines: What's the Pain? Deliver the Aspirin

Pain gets readers' attention. If you watch the nightly news, you'd be forgiven for thinking that all six billion people on the planet constantly suffer through fire and flood, war and famine, and that bodies litter the average suburban street.

The old newsman's saying "if it bleeds, it leads" contains an essential truth. If you remind people of their pain in your headline, they'll read your article.

So think about the audience for your article and the response you want. What's their pain? Make a list of pains that your readers have, and select one. This forms the basis for your headline.

3. The Missing Link: Promote Your Articles

You may be wondering what promotion has to do with your headline. We're talking about headlines, not about promotion... or are we?

If you want to have the best success with your articles, realize that you need to promote them.

If you're writing for someone else, they will handle the promotion. However if you're writing articles for yourself, you'll need to promote them yourself.

Consider promotion when you're writing the headline. Some headlines are very easy to promote on the social networking sites and elsewhere, others less so.