Free Tool • No Signup Required • Unlimited Uses
How it works
Paste your headline
Add any blog title, article headline, landing page H1, or email subject line.
Get an instant score
See a score out of 100 broken into dimensions you can improve individually.
See specific fixes
Understand what to improve: clarity, length, sentiment, or word balance.
Quick Answer
A headline checker scores a headline against patterns that correlate with clicks and engagement, including word balance, sentiment, length, and clarity. It returns a composite score plus suggestions for improvement. It is a diagnostic, not a guarantee of performance.
Why headlines carry more weight than the article itself
A common rule in copywriting is that far more people read a headline than the body copy beneath it. Whatever is spent writing the article, the headline decides whether that effort gets seen at all.
This applies twice in search: once when the title competes against other results in Google, and again when the reader scans the page itself.
Who this is for
- Anyone about to publish a headline they are not fully confident in
- Founders A/B testing landing page and blog headlines
- Teams standardizing headline quality across multiple writers
Does a high score mean it will actually perform well?
A high score means your headline avoids patterns that often underperform, such as vague phrasing, poor length, flat sentiment, or weak clarity.
It does not know your specific audience, competitor headlines, or whether the headline accurately matches search intent. Treat the score as a floor, not a ceiling. A lower-scored headline that nails intent can outperform a higher-scored headline that misses it.
What each score actually measures
A single number is only useful if you know what it is made of. These are the dimensions behind the score.
| Dimension | What it checks |
|---|---|
| Word Balance | Mix of common, uncommon, emotional, and power words |
| Sentiment | Whether the headline reads positive, negative, or neutral |
| Length | Character and word count, short enough to scan quickly |
| Clarity | Whether an average reader understands it at a glance |
What a strong headline does
- Leads with a specific number, outcome, or detail
- Uses one or two power words naturally, not stacked
- Is understandable at a glance without re-reading
- Matches the sentiment and promise of the content that follows
What to avoid
- ×Over-stuffing emotional or power words until it reads as clickbait
- ×Vague headlines with no concrete hook
- ×Headlines over roughly 12 words that lose scannability
- ×A headline whose promise the content does not actually deliver
Example headline score breakdown
Headline
Zero-Budget SEO: 7 Tactics for Bootstrapped Founders
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. What does a headline score actually measure?
It typically measures word balance, sentiment, character and word count, clarity, and readability. It is a diagnostic, not a guarantee of performance.
Q. Does a high headline score guarantee more clicks?
No. It flags known patterns that tend to underperform, but it does not know your specific audience or how well the headline matches search intent.
Q. What is a power word?
A word carrying strong emotional or persuasive weight, like proven, essential, or free, shown to increase engagement when used naturally and sparingly.
Q. Is this tool free?
Yes, this tool is free with no signup required.
Q. How many words should a headline be?
Six to twelve words is a common sweet spot: long enough to be specific, short enough to be scanned and understood quickly.
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