How To Write Better Headlines with Headline Analyzer Studio by CoSchedule
Coming up with click-worthy headlines can be challenging. You want something that accurately reflects the content of your article while also being engaging and attention-grabbing. Fortunately, there’s a tool that can help you with that – Headline Analyzer Studio by CoSchedule.
I’ve used CoSchedule to analyze my headlines for many years. But, while I’ve mentioned it in emails and training resources, I’ve never written a blog post about it. Until now.
If you’re not familiar with CoSchedule, it’s a comprehensive content marketing platform that helps you plan, publish, optimize, and measure your results. But in this post, we’re only going to focus on their headline analyzer tool.
Here’s what you need to know about Headline Analyzer Studio by CoSchedule…
What is Headline Analyzer Studio?
Headline Analyzer Studio is a tool that helps you write better headlines. It does this by scoring your headlines on a scale of 0-100, with 100 being the best possible score.
I’m a sucker for anything that gives me a score. 🙂 I like to have those benchmarks so that I can work on improving.
The Headline Analyzer Studio also gives you feedback on what you can do to improve your headlines. It’s great for getting ideas on how to make your headlines more effective.
You’ll get tips on word choice, headline length, word balance, and more.
How Does It Work?
To use Headline Analyzer Studio, simply enter the headline you want to test into the box on their website. The headline analyzer will then give you an instant score and feedback on what you can do to improve your headline.
For example, here’s a screenshot of my first pass at a headline for this post.
You can see I got a score of 68, which is not bad. But it could be better.
The tool suggests that I add some emotional and uncommon words to improve this headline. It also recommends that I rephrase the headline and simplify complex words. Those are good tips.
You get a new score each time you make changes. And you can see the various headlines you’ve tried in the version history.
You can see here that it took me a few tries to get the final headline for this post:
My Favorite Features
Headline Score
Like I said earlier, I’m a sucker for anything that gives me a score. And I love that the Headline Analyzer Studio gives you an instant score for your headlines.
It’s a great way to see your headline’s effectiveness and compare it to other headlines you’ve tried.
Word Banks
I’m not great at including emotional words in my headlines. So I love that there are word banks available within the tool. It makes it super easy to search for different types of words to punch up your headline. You’ll find word banks for power, emotional, uncommon, and common words.
Word Balance Visualization
The tool gives you recommendations on improving the word balance in your headline. But it also provides a color-coded visualization of the word balance. This is really helpful in seeing which words are power words or emotional words.
In this screenshot, you can see that “Better” is highlighted in purple. That’s because it’s a power word. The words that are highlighted yellow are “common words.”
Things that could be better
There are some things that I think could be improved.
Sidebar Scrolling
The sidebar does not have a scrollbar (at least in Chrome – I haven’t checked other browsers). So to scroll, you have to use the wheel on your mouse. I never use the mouse wheel, so that’s a big annoyance for me. (I’ve lifted this issue up to their support team, so I hope it gets changed.)
Inconsistent Headline Length Recommendations
If you look at the Headline Score tab, it recommends a headline length of at least 70 characters.
However, the SEO Score tab will tell you that your headline is too long if you follow that recommendation.
I dislike inconsistency, so that bothers me.
Some Other Ways I Use Headline Analyzer
So far, we’ve discussed using this tool to create clickable blog post titles. But I use it for more than that.
For example, I like to create multiple Pinterest titles for each blog post. So, I use the Coschedule Headline Analyzer to help me write those. Then, I’ll try different headlines on my pins to see which ones get the best results.
I also use it for writing email subject lines. For example, I’ll often write a few different headlines and then pick two to A/B test in my emails.
It’s also helpful for creating a hook for social media captions.
Pricing
Headline Analyzer Studio offers a free plan and a Pro plan with three pricing levels.
Free Plan
The free plan allows you to score unlimited standard headlines. That means that it doesn’t include the premium features. There’s also a limited lookback for the version history.
Pro Plans
The Pro Plans include premium features that aren’t available on the free plan.
Premium features include:
- Smart suggestions for improving your headline
- SEO score
- Word banks
- Full version history
- Full headline history
Prices for the Pro plans start at $19/month when billed monthly or $9/month when billed annually.
The different pricing levels are based on the number of premium headlines you can score each month. This part is a little confusing.
The lowest price level includes 5 premium headlines per month. That doesn’t seem like much. However, each premium headline allows for 25 variations. That means you have 25 tries to get a headline that you’re happy with for a single post.
So, for example, when writing the headline for this post, I wrote 4 variations, but I only used 1 premium headline.
The next price level is $59/month (or $29/month if billed annually). That allows you to score 20 premium headlines per month.
The most expensive plan is $99/month (or $49/month if billed annually). With that plan, you can score 60 premium headlines per month
Conclusion
Overall, I really like the Headline Analyzer Studio by CoSchedule. It’s a super helpful tool for creating compelling and clickable headlines. The interface is easy to use, and the results are instant.
I think some areas could be improved, such as the scrolling in the sidebar and the inconsistent headline length recommendations. But overall, I think it’s a great tool. I would recommend it to anyone looking for help with writing effective headlines.
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