Best Free Headline Analyzer Tools for Quickly Writing Better Titles

Designing your headline is a combination of art and science.

Art, because your headline should be poetic. You can use poetic devices, such as alliteration and assonance, for example, to lull readers into taking action.

Poetry has been described as “the best words in the best order.” Your headline, therefore, should definitely be considered poetry.

Science, because you should focus on the strength and frequency of your keywords, the length of your title, and other factors relating to the composition of the title.

You don’t need an art or science degree, however. You can pick up headline writing as you go. It takes time, but there are tools and techniques that will help you.

Which we will provide.

Here are the best free headline analyzer tools that will help you get the most out of your headlines.

1. CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer

Put your title into the search box. Hit “analyze now.”

CoSchedule will provide you with a visual representation of where your headline hits and misses and why. It looks at structure, grammar, and readability. It also classifies your headline type, looks at your word balance, and breaks down your title according to:

• Common words

• Uncommon words

• Emotional words, and

• Power words

You need power and emotion and a sense of the unique to compel someone to take action. By balancing the types of words in your headline, you can create a title that is more likely to resonate with readers.

This tool is simple to use and you might even find it fun. It keeps a rolling headline history, so you can see how far you’ve come when you make improvements.

Aim for a score that is above average, but don’t lose your weekend to tweaking.

2. ShareThrough Headline Analyzer

Initially, this analyzer looks simpler to use than CoSchedule. It seems easier to interpret too. All this, despite there appearing to be more going on behind the scenes.

ShareThrough wants to help you determine how engaging your headline is. In part, it looks out for context words, which it describes as “the secret sauce.” Context words are the 1072 words that increase a person’s attention and interest in a message.

This finding is the result of neuroscientific experimentation. There were EEGs involved. The scientists also used the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, which, in this case, helped measure how people responded to different words.

The ShareThrough headline analyzer is based on some very interesting neuroscience and advertising research. It provides you with feedback through an engagement score and an impression score. Engagement is based on your word choice. Impression is based on those interesting context words.

Also, according to ShareThrough, based on their research, lengthier headlines (21 – 28 words) are more engaging and create more impact than shorter headlines.

When it comes to tweaking your headline, improving your score can feel hit and miss, because it reports on your headline as a whole, not your individual words. Also, improve your engagement score can cause your impression score to decrease, and vice versa.

Our advice is to use this analyzer as a guide for creating better engagement and more impressions over all. And it does provide some interesting recommendations, referring to a brand (for brand lift), and incorporating more alarm words, such as “risk” and “scare.”

3. Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer

This headline analyzer does not look as beautiful as the previous analyzers. While first impressions are important online, and this is an entire post about creating a good impression with headlines, persist with this site. You may find it very valuable.

It’s very simple to use and provides clear, useful feedback. It provides you with the headline’s predominant emotional value. The title of this post, when run through this headline analyzer, is said to appeal most to people’s intellectual sphere. Other categories are “empathetic,” “spiritual,” and “neutral.” Avoid neutral.

Thinking about your headline’s emotional sphere can be helpful. You can consider whether or not your headline aligns with the message in your blog post. Or you can decide the objective of your blog post – i.e. what do you want people to think, feel, or do – and make sure that your headline’s emotional value matches.

Note that this headline analyzer will drop a guillotine on your headline at the 20-word mark, so it won’t always work seamlessly alongside ShareThrough, which advises longer headlines. If you like to keep your headlines short, however, this analyzer will provide you with the proper motivation.

What we like especially about this analyzer is that you can tell it what industry category the blog post will fall into and it tells you how it compares to other headlines for blog posts in your industry.

You may also be interested in viewing our handpicked blogging tools.

You don’t need to use all of these headline analyzers. Most people will have one that they prefer over the others. The best approach might be to pick a favorite and give the other two a supporting role when you have an extra special post to share or when you are ready to take your headline writing to the next level.

Sometimes you’ll want to know the emotional value of a headline, at other times you’ll want to dig deep to refine every word, and other times you’ll want a general impression from a headline you’ve already polished. Between them, these free headline analyzers have got you covered.

And that’s not all. While the following are not headline analyzers, we wanted to mention these tools, because they will also help you optimize your titles.

• Answer the Public – Before you hone your headline, make sure you’ve honed your idea. This tool can help you discover topic ideas.

• Buzz Sumo - This tool identifies titles that are performing well in the social media space. Using this information to tweak your headline might make your post more engaging. It’s also good to see if competitors have had success with the topic and headline type that you are proposing.

• Headline Capitalization - This Useful Tool Helps Make Sure That You Are Formatting Your Headlines Correctly. Since first impressions count for a lot, don’t lose potential customers and clicks by using poor grammar.

Remember that if you’re writing a blog post, you’re competing with everything on the internet. Add to that everything that’s not on the internet, too.

Don’t panic though. Use these headline analyzing tools and take our advice, and your posts will be getting so much attention that other businesses will worry about having to compete with you.

Related: The Best Blogging Tools Handpicked by Blogging Experts