I Checked My Old Articles with a Headline Analyzer. And the Results Were Awful.

Or were they?

When you choose the title of your next article you’re faced with 3 choices:

Optimize it for search engines, or should I say “robots” 🤖
Write a human-friendly headline that will make people eager to click on your article from the millions of blog posts posted each day
Rack your brains to please both humans and robots ⚖️

Years ago, I didn’t pay much attention to the headings of my own blog posts. Mainly, because I focus too much on the content. But not thinking about writing an engaging headline was a big mistake.

So I took my previous headlines and ran a few searches to test them. And let me tell you, they needed a lot of improvement which is why I’ve changed them since then (of course, I made my choice I went with option number 1 mentioned above 😇).

CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer is a tool that should help you write more attractive and convincing headlines and get more readers.

Let’s start with my best results from the headline analysis process:

How To Hire A Strong Ruby On Rails Developer

Simple and straightforward. Although not a very special headline, it appeals to the reader’s intent by offering a concrete promise from the very title of the article.

Great length. And a positive sentiment which is what I had aimed for:

10 Useful and Free Digital Marketing Courses

A typical headline for a list post that’s also optimized for search engines.

42 Useful Digital and Social Media Marketing Quotes

Same headline style put together for a list post and optimized for search engines.

My problem with such headlines remains the fact that everyone ends up writing similar ones so readers are not able to distinguish between similar articles of interest anymore.

Despite the good rating, this is where the tool falls short. You can have the perfect headline, but if everyone writes them according to the same formula, you’re not going to get any value at the end.

Another similar situation is for the following article headline:

8 Killer Copywriting Secrets You Haven’t Thought About

Content Marketing – The Anatomy of Successful Content

This particular headline is missing uncommon and emotional words that are usually considered appealing. However, I saved it with a power word: successful.

And it’s length is also almost perfect:

This headline analyzer also takes a look at the sentiment the heading offers:

And it’s true. This was one of my most successful articles, and I can assume the headline played an important part in this.

Ways to Donate to an Animal Shelter

The title was meant to be generic. And this is exactly what the results say:

But the score could have been improved:

And it lacks the emotional factor it might have needed.

SEO in 79 Images – A Visual Guide to Search Engine Optimization Terms

Here’s a headline I had high hopes for. Interesting number, unique benefit, SEO keyword…

And although many successful articles follow this pattern, the truth is that it’s just: common.

And the length is just a fail.

Cut, Copy, and Paste – the First Steps to Marketing Automation

Better than expected from a headline that tells you nothing. But maybe this is exactly what makes people click on the article.

And another headline from the series had similar results:

Rapid Fire Technique for SEO Outreach

But not the same can be said about the first one from the series:

Spontaneous Content – A Concept

And its short length is even worse:

Create Your Own Coloring Book With Canva – Design Tutorial

A surprisingly good headline I got from the first option try. Plus, it did well on Medium so this is one proof of the effectiveness of headlines for catching a reader’s attention.

How to Create a Free E-Book for Children With Canva.com in Just 4 Steps + “The Story of Life” E-Book

Similar to the previous one in terms of intent, but with the ever-so-common “How to” impact words at the beginning.

Creative Instagram Posts for Any Phone and Budget

A simple but generic headline that’s just missing a few emotional words and a number at the beginning to give an idea of how ample the article is.

The Real Importance Of Article Length

You wouldn’t expect this to score so well since it appears a bit too bland and vague at first sight, but it does contain a power word (i.e. “importance“) that saves and changes the headline.

Is Instagram losing its value among non-business users?

Intriguing and complete with one emotional (value) and one powerful word (losing).

Also, this is a perfect example of a blog post headline that recreates a negative sentiment:

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Of course, aiming for a perfect 100 score is not realistic. In fact, on the CoSchedule blog you’ll notice that only the best headlines have their scored displayed.

And 71 is not a perfect score either.

Even some the headlines of their top articles score less than 70:

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Remember that these are just numbers that are meant to give you a helping hand when you’re creating your next blog post. And the truth is that any of these headlines will get people to read your article.

The perfect headline is the one YOUR audience needs. So before you freak out because your scores are low, take a look at what your most successful articles’ headlines were.

Let me know if you have any tips on writing better headlines in the comments section below.

Also, what I truly want to ask you is:

Do you believe in using automated tools to create a perfect headline? And is there such a thing as a perfect headline? Share your thoughts and examples!