Free checker · Content and Writing
Headline Analyzer.
Most headline scorers hand back a number and decline to explain it. This shows the whole scorecard — length, specificity, emotional words, capitalisation, clickbait — so you can disagree with any rule you can see.
An article title, an H1, or a title tag. One at a time — this is a tool for improving a headline rather than picking between fifty.
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What this tool measures
Scores a headline out of a hundred, and shows every rule the score came from.
That second half is the point. Every headline scorer online returns a number and declines to explain it, which makes the number impossible to argue with and therefore useless. Here the whole scorecard is visible: what was looked for, what was found, and what each item is worth. Disagreeing with a rule is a perfectly good reason to ignore it, and you can only disagree with a rule you can see.
The rules come from published headline research, which is drawn almost entirely from blog and social headlines. They fit an article title well and a service page badly.
How to use it
Enter one headline and work on it. This is deliberately not a tool for scoring fifty variants and taking the winner — the score is a summary of rules, and optimising against it directly produces headlines that score well and read like they were written by a scoring tool.
Read the scorecard from the red items up. Each one names what is missing and why it matters, so you can decide whether it applies to this headline before changing anything.
How to read the result
The largest single points are length, specificity and a number, because those are the three that show up most consistently in click-through data. A headline that contains a figure, a place or a timeframe outperforms one that could describe any article on the subject.
Capitalisation is worth eight points and is the one most people argue with. Sentence case tends to test better than Title Case because it reads as reporting rather than advertising. It is a preference, and the eight points are not worth breaking a house style over.
A low score is not automatically a bad headline. “Web design in Dubai” scores poorly here and is exactly right for the page it sits on, because a service page headline has a different job: state plainly what is sold, to someone who already knows they want it.
What to do next
Fix specificity first. It carries real weight, it is the most common gap, and adding a figure or a timeframe usually improves the honesty of the headline as well as its performance.
Then check the headline against the page. A headline that promises something the page does not deliver wins the click and loses everything after it, and that is not a trade worth making twice.
Questions people ask
Should my H1 and my title tag be the same?
They can be, and they do different jobs. The title tag competes in a list of ten results against nine others; the H1 is read by someone who has already clicked and wants confirmation they are in the right place. Where there is room, letting them differ is usually the better use of both.
Do numbers in headlines really work?
For list articles, consistently — a number sets an expectation about length and structure before anyone clicks, and that is one of the most reproducible effects in headline research. For a service page it is meaningless, and forcing one in produces the kind of headline nobody believes.
Is a high score worth chasing?
Up to a point. Past about seventy the remaining points come from rules that may not apply to your headline at all. Optimising to ninety usually means stuffing in power words, and a headline overloaded with them reads as desperate rather than confident.
Why does my perfectly good headline score badly?
Most likely because it is a service or product headline being judged by rules derived from blog posts. Plain, unadorned, specific headlines are right for pages where the reader already knows what they want. Take the scorecard as a set of questions, not a verdict.
Where to go from here
- Google SERP Snippet Preview — See the headline as a search result, at the real width.
- Word and Character Counter — Check it against every field it will have to fit.
- Reading Level Checker — Then check the page the headline is promising.
The guide behind this tool
Built by GoDesign FZE, who write and ship page copy that converts.
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