”It’s hard enough to write for the Web and meet the guidelines for concise, scannable, and objective content. It’s even harder to write Web headlines, which must be:
* short (because people don’t read much online); * rich in information scent, clearly summarizing the target article;
* front-loaded with the most important keywords (because users often scan only the beginning of list items);
* understandable out of context (because headlines often appear without articles, as in search engine results); and
* predictable, so users know whether they’ll like the full article before they click (because people don’t return to sites that promise more than they deliver).

World’s Best Headlines: BBC News (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)