A headline has one job: get the right person to open the page. This analyzer scores the parts of a headline that can be measured in the text itself, and shows its working, so you can see which change moved the number and decide whether you agree.

How the score is built

• Length in words (20 points). Six to twelve words is the range where a headline has room to promise something without burying it.
• Fits a search result (15). Google cuts a title by width, not by characters. We measure the width of each letter, so a title full of narrow letters gets more room than one of capitals.
• Mix of common words (15). All filler reads as vague, all unusual words reads as jargon. A fifth to a half common words reads naturally.
• Emotional and power words (15). Words such as mistake, proven, secret or free give the reader a reason to care or to act.
• A number (10). “7 ways” is concrete. A how-to or a question earns half, since they promise an answer without one.
• A clear format (10). A list, a how-to, a question, a guide or a comparison tells the reader what kind of page they are about to get.
• A strong opening (15). Only the first words are sure to be seen, so they should not be filler.
• Your target keyword (10), if you give one. Present, and early rather than late.

What the score is not

It is not a prediction of rankings or clicks. No tool can know how a headline will do against the ones around it on a particular day. What a score does well is catch the common problems quickly: a title that will be cut, a headline with no promise in it, a first word that wastes the best spot. Treat a high score as “no obvious problems”, and a low one as a list of things to try.

The word lists are English and hand-picked, so a headline in another language will mostly read as uncommon words. The length, width and number checks still apply.

Writing several and picking one

The best habit in headline writing is volume. Write ten, put them in the box together and look at the top few. Then choose on judgement: which one would you click, and which one does the page actually deliver on? A headline that over-promises gets the click and loses the reader, which does more harm than a modest one.

Title tag or headline?

The headline on the page and the title tag Google shows can differ. If you want a longer on-page headline and a shorter title for search, check the shorter one here. The SEO Title Checker measures a title against Google's truncation in more detail, and the Word Counter shows how any text fits other limits.