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Good opening line is crucial for catching a potential reader's attention. It's been proven that within the first 3 seconds after opening a website, the reader makes a decision whether to click away, or to stay and read the entire article.

On Helium, writers publish their articles to earn money from the page views. And while repeating the title in the first line of their article may help them get the point across, maybe even help with their word count, it is going to hurt them in the long run.

Why? For several reasons.

Helium designs its titles is a certain way. They are meant to be descriptive, packed with keywords and provide a short summary of what the reader can expect from the article. So it's safe to say that the reader already has a vague idea of what he or she is going to read. Now they need reassurance that they found the right article and that it's going to a) answer their question or b) teach them more about the subject. Possibly in a funny and/or authoritative way.

Another point against repeating the title at the beginning of your article is how Helium publishes content on its pages. All the reader sees at first is the title and the beginning of the first paragraph.
Now, most of the articles published here are of the one of the many kind. Meaning there is more than one article on the same subject. And to get the reader choose your article above all the others, the first paragraph needs to have this extra "oomph". Something witty and eye-catching. Is repeating the title going to achieve that? I honestly doubt that.

And let's not even mention that little stalling technique we all learnt at school. You know, the one where you repeated the question after the teacher, to give you those extra seconds to figure out a decent answer. If you're using it now... It might not show you in a very professional light. Don't forget that on Helium, those who are considered "experts" earn more.

Unnecessary repetitions, ones not made to emphasize your point, will only make your reader lose interest in your article. Uninterested reader will click away, instead of clicking to read more of your stuff. That means that in a long run you will lose potential revenue.

I also have a personal reason for which I detest authors who repeat the title at the beginning of the article. I'm not saying it's a particularly deep one, but I'm passionate about it nonetheless.

Word count.

It's something very important on Helium. If you don't meet the minimum, you can't publish your opinion. And because Helium favors descriptive titles, by repeating it, you often can raise your word count up by even 15 words. The title of this article is 10 words long. And sometimes those 10 words can make a difference between publishing the article or not. I, for one, am against cheap tricks like that.

I do realize, not many authors need tricks like that to meet the needed quota. However giving up quality and content and exchanging it for what? Aesthetics? Spam? Disbelief that readers can remember what the article is about?

I don't really know, what it is that makes authors repeat the title at the beginning of their articles. But I don't like it and find it highly unprofessional. For whatever reason.

Learn more about this author, Jane Rutherford.
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