Football365 Journalist Will Ford dives into his playbook, exploring the art of crafting compelling articles by weaving together powerful stories, click-worthy headlines, and trending football discussion points. From balancing SEO and reader engagement to fine-tuning details, the ultimate goal is creating quality, engaging, and authentic content that resonates with football fans and keeps them coming back for more.
"By positioning these elements together you create intrigue. Whilst a reader might think the whole story is about one subject, the second half referencing something separate might tempt them to click on the article."
How do you choose a headline for a piece and what qualities make it stand out to readers?
The first step to finding a working headline is finding a good story. For a news piece, I ask myself what the big things going on in football at the minute are.
Right now, this would be the January transfer window; you could talk about Rashford wanting to leave Manchester United, or Mainoo, there's been some big stories about him recently. I start on Google, investigating the names, searching for discussions whilst also looking for relevant links to other sources.
We tend to focus on the big clubs, unless there's something monumental going on at the smaller clubs. Manchester United and City are bigger clubs, and currently in a bit of a mess, so focussing on them makes sense.
Aside from that I look at getting the team names into the headline; depending on the situation, I might consider putting a player's name in there too. For instance, if a player from a larger team's getting great results on Google, I can put their name in the headline. If it’s another star player, that may not be as popular on Google, I might name the team but hide the player’s name within the headline.
We've had good success with headline kickers, for example, putting Manchester United or Manchester United Transfer, followed by a colon, then the story.
At times getting two stories into the same headline is a good tactic. For instance, some transfer news about Rashford combined with a comment from a pundit. The key is not to make it click bait! We don't want a reader to click on an article just to leave the site annoyed because you’re selling something the story isn't telling them.
"You want people to be curious but definitely not angry after clicking on a headline, and I think that’s key: working hard to balance factual accuracy yet remaining click-worthy, since clicks are what provide the revenue."
We've also had quite a lot of success with putting emotive language within the headlines. It may be an adjective pairing, like ‘Sensational Rashford Move’.
It's all a balancing act between writing techniques, SEO, common conventions in online spaces all fused with 'virality' and combing through the biggest stories?
Exactly. Obviously, headlines are key, we’ll never say they're not. But at the same time, if the writing isn’t up to scratch, you're very quickly going to lose an audience and they're not going to keep coming back if they’re attracted by a headline but click on an article to find it’s a load of nonsense.
"We're also very eager not to hide the stories. I know some publications, naming no names, that put the key selling points ten paragraphs down. We tend to put them in the first three lines."
Followed by that, there might be a second part of the headline, like I mentioned earlier, located a little further down the page, to keep our readers engaged throughout the article and keep them going past the ads.
Ultimately, it's not a good feeling when you think you've tricked someone into clicking on an article. You want them to click on it and truly feel it was worth it.
How do you balance news and feature writing and what do you think makes a piece successful in both?
I think for opinion pieces, particularly match opinion, you can get a game which is just so brilliant even the headline doesn't particularly matter, since people are going to be clicking on the article either way.
Going into any game, before I even start watching it, I think, if this match doesn't produce anything particularly outstanding, how am I going to sell this opinion?
It might be based on a manager's comments before the game. Ange Postecoglou’s golden for that, he's been coming up with some incredible stuff recently. Or I may focus on players that are struggling, perhaps doing some in-depth analysis on them.
But if the players are fantastic and the game is brilliant you needn’t think about these things, you need to have something in your back pocket. You may need to consider how the clubs are performing.
Recently, Liverpool played two games without a win, which doesn't sound like much, but since they got a couple of injuries as well, you may mention in the headline: ‘Liverpool on the brink of crisis?’, since they're not doing as well due to their centre back struggles.
Another consideration for these pieces is refining the focus. The bigger name will always receive more clicks from our audience. The fact of the matter is there are more big team fans, and even non-big team fans will be interested in the loss, because they want to see them fail.
Do you have to watch every game?
That's certainly what I tell my wife! We're fortunate with the job we do, we wouldn't be doing this unless we love football. I do watch a lot of games, as many of them live as I can. If I can't, I watch Match of the Day or the highlights.
It's difficult to go into a game without knowing about the teams; maybe that doesn't happen so much with the big ones, but I cover a lot of Monday Night Football, which tends to be the smaller teams, which I quite like. It's more of a challenge really to get more hits on those articles, but you can't go into those games without knowing the players and what they've done previously.
"It feels particularly good if you get a story about say, Bournemouth Wolves, to go really well since it feels like you're giving more to those fan bases than you would to Manchester United for example, since they might not be getting loads of articles about Andoni Iraola working magic at Bournemouth - but he is, and he deserves some credit for that!"
How do you ensure that content for the smaller teams resonates with readers and drives high engagement?
We benefit from having the ability to A/B test different headlines. The headline on the site would be sold essentially purely based on Bournemouth, if we're using that as an example. But as I'm writing an article, I would see about linking another big team into this. It might be the case that they're about to play Liverpool or there’s a player who is linked to Liverpool or would perhaps work well at Liverpool.
In the page title, I might lead with the big team to drive that engagement, particularly with Google Discover this technique seems to work well. Within the opinion, I’d include a couple of paragraphs which is based upon the Liverpool link, meaning in the page title, I can then write about Liverpool as well as Bournemouth.
"You do not want to mislead audiences, that can come back to bite you."
How do you write SEO copy without compromising on quality?
This is something we're constantly thinking about.
As I mentioned before, you've got to think about big teams and players to make sure we get traffic through Google. Headline kickers work well, but ensuring headlines are at the right length is also key; if they're too short, they don't tend to do well. A transfer story from a transfer expert might mean we name that person; if it's Fabrizio Romano or David Ornstein, we may include that.
Quotes work well, if Gary Neville or Jamie Carragher are one of the big punters who said something, then we'd firstly name them, but including some sort of emotive language.
What do you consider the key elements of a compelling match reaction article are and is there any methodology you always follow?
Not particularly. If it's a match opinion, you might think about things going on ahead of the game and try and focus on that, but if nothing major is happening, those match reactions are bound to be slightly more transfer based, if you're in the January transfer window.
"I don't think people necessarily come to our site for match reports, they can get those elsewhere, they come to us for our opinions."
If we're approaching a major tournament or an England squad selection, we might think about gaining based on those. So, if there's a player playing for Wolves who's in with the chance of an England place, then we might base a match reaction on that.
You're always thinking about what point you are in the season and focusing match reactions based that. In my case, opinion pieces for games tend to be very different, resembling more of a match report, writing what's happening and including bits of opinion.
Or it might be that the game's not particularly interesting, so you can pick out one player and write solely about them. You might not even mention the goals or anything like that– it's not entirely necessary. In our case, I don't think people come to our site for match reports, they can get those elsewhere, they come to us for our opinions.
Social media can be important in writing compelling reaction pieces. There's an example a little while ago with Chiesa playing for Liverpool after a long break - he was on for 45 minutes and played well but only for the first half an hour, or it might have been the other way around. Either way, I couldn’t work out what to write about the game, it wasn't particularly interesting.
But then I looked on social media and saw that there was there was this battle between Liverpool fans where some of them said it was the best thing they’ve ever seen, and some people said it was the worst thing they’ve ever seen, so I stuck with that thought since you can then write a headline which includes some of those opinions.
In the headline, I put something along the lines of ‘Chiesa is a world class flop’, since someone said he's world class, meanwhile someone said he's a flop.
Those two things together are going to create intrigue, people will think those are two very disparate things– how can those two things be paired? In the end, I wrote about his performance and how mad it is one set of supporters can have such differing opinions on one player.
How do you keep content fresh and relevant, particularly during busy periods?
"You can have football opinions, and I know a lot about football, but at the end of the day, it's the writing that's going to keep people coming back."
It can be quite useful to think about the second line story. If everyone's going to focus on one key moment in the game, try think about the thing not everyone's going to be talking about, this works with news as well.
Often we get quotes from Gary Neville or Jamie Carragher, and every single news outlet is immediately on them resulting in 100’s of articles with roughly the same headline and quote. Traffic won’t be great as a result, so we choose to focus on another interesting thing they said.
Social media is a great resource for mad football opinions– that's always worth looking at. I also chat with mates about football, and although I'm not going to include their quotes in a headline, I might base my article on a text they've sent me. I may write 'my Liverpool-supporting mate just sent me this and I thought it was a load of nonsense' and then go on to talk about it.
What's your approach to staying consistent in producing content that performs well month after month?
Kowing your stuff is obviously the most important thing. I remember Sarah [Editor, Football365] saying to me when I started that there'll be millions of football fans in the country, but the reason you've been hired is because you're a good writer. So that's what sets you apart.
You can have football opinions, and I know a lot about football, but at the end of the day, it's the writing that's going to keep people coming back.
It's the nature of the job that some people might dislike you, but I like to think a lot of people see my name in an opinion piece and click on it because of my name, alongside the headline being intriguing and readers wanting some match opinion.
"I don't want to see that my 2000-word article is only being read for 45 seconds because I know that person has effectively thought it was something that it wasn't. They're not reading it because they like what I'm writing or want to read to the end."
This is something Mark [Holmes, Planet Sport Group's Head of Publishing] talked about recently: we’re essentially creating our own individual brands, so you want your writing to be consistent, not only because you're picking the right themes or conventions, which is obviously key, but because our writing is genuinely good stuff.
What KPIs do you track most closely to measure the success of your articles?
I'm obsessed with Chartbeat and page views.
If I write a feature and opinion piece and it gets loads of hits, quite a significant portion will be from Google Discover, meaning someone has clicked on a headline which they've been drawn to due to intrigue.
It’s great that they want to click on it, but what I don't want to see is that my 2000-word article is only being read for 45 seconds because I know that person has effectively thought it was something that it wasn't. They're not reading it because they like what I'm writing or want to read to the end.
Although I obviously love getting lots of hits, I think the combination of engaged minutes is the thing that I focus on most. If I know that's going up month-on-month, that's a good measure of improvement.