Boing Boing posted an article summarizing Jakob Nielsen’s findings that web-headlines benefit from the use of the passive voice.
Great copywriters will tell you that your headlines need powerful action words and compelling benefits to get the reader engaged into the rest of your sales letter. While this can be true in the headlines of long-form direct sales copy, writing HTML titles and descriptions requires more thought that just duplicating your headline and first paragraph.
These findings also provide some best practices for writing blog post titles and excerpts, which are similar to the copy that viewers might scan a Google search engine result page.
Key point: Get the first two words right. Help scanning eyes pick out the meaning of your page or post quickly. This rule also includes other page elements on which readers fixate: subheads, summaries, captions, hypertext links, and bulleted lists.