Let's start with an interesting statistic that's NOT about headlines! Did you know that you only have 2.6 measly seconds to grab the attention of your first-time visitor to your website?
Well, if you didn't, now you do.
The most crucial element of any piece of web copy is not how well it's been structured or optimized for search engines. It's not how compelling the opening paragraph is, or how eye-catching the featured image looks, or anything like that.
It is, in fact, the headline title.
If your headline title is not compelling enough, no one will click on it if it's not convincing. Boring headlines do not work.
Here is another statistic:
On average, eight out of ten people will read your headline title, but only two out of ten folks will go on to read your content.
- CopyBlogger
So, with that in mind, it's time to stop writing sloppy headlines and start getting creative.
The statistics above speak for themselves. However, using headlines tools can help you make your blog posts stick out from the rest quickly. Instead of second-guessing what headline will work or what your readers are likely to click on, you can use headline tools to help optimize and test headlines.
OK, enough ranting! Below I will share with you 5 useful headline tools that will help you create high-converting headlines not just for your blog posts but for all your web copy.
Let's dive right in.
If you only have a small amount of time to read about each of the tools below, here is a quick link roundup you can use to check each one of them out -
Let's start with one of the best headline tools in the business right now - Thrive Headline Optimizer from the Thrive Suite membership tools.
The headline optimizer plugin is an extremely powerful and time-saving tool for bloggers. It allows bloggers to create multiple headline titles for blog posts and then test them against each other. Over time, enough data is collected, and you'll be able to see which headlines drive the most engagements and clicks.
You can create as many headlines as you want for each post. You can even set the plugin on autopilot to select the winning headline after a period of time,
Sounds good, right?
You'll analyze important data such as views, engagements, clicks, scrolls, time on site, and more for each post.
I used the Thrive Headline Optimizer for a little while on my blog and wrote a detailed review with a tutorial video for this plugin which you can find here.
Next up on our list is CoSchedule's Headline Analyzer.
As you may know, I use CoSchedule's awesome content calendar tool to organize my blog and marketing content. You can read all about it here.
CoSchedule also has a useful headline analyzer tool, and when used properly, it can give you some beneficial insights into how well your headline titles have been constructed.
It considers crucial factors like word balance, character and word count, keywords, and more. You also get an overall headline score.
This tool also lets you know if your headline is too long. I'll talk more about title length at the end of this post.
I've found using this tool in conjunction with the Thrive Headline Optimizer plugin to be the magic formula for creating perfect headlines every time. Please take the phrase 'magic formula' with a pinch of salt.
Powerful headlines can also evoke emotional feelings. Using emotion in your post titles, for instance, can really help evoke curiosity and interest in your content.
The Emotional Headline tool can help you closely analyze your titles to see whether you're using effective emotional words and then give you an EMV score based on that. (Emotional Marketing Value).
In addition, the tool will also give you an indication as to what kind of emotions your headlines will create for your readers; for instance, will it be intellectual, empathetic, or spiritual, or all of them?
Take a look at the screengrab below. I've created an example headline title: "how to easily write click-worthy headline titles like a boss".
From this example, the score I achieved was 30 (30% emotional marketing value).
Not bad, right?
Give this a try with your titles and see what score you come up with.
Linkbait, or clickbait titles, as I like to call them, are great for grabbing readers' attention quickly.
However, be very careful with this tool. Whilst it's great for coming up with linkbait suggestions, you've still got to ensure that your title remains 100% relevant.
With this tool, all you do is enter a topic, something you're writing about, for instance, and then hit get link bait.
As you will see from the screen capture below, using the topic "blog commenting", I've been able to find a few examples of linkbait titles.
Cool, don't you think?
Again, use the ideas it comes up with as a base to come up with your own relevant linkbait headlines. There's nothing worst than creating misleading blog post titles just to attract clicks; that's not what this tool is about.
Sometimes you might have a really great idea for a blog post, but creating a title for it might be a bit of a challenge.
That's where the Portent's Content Idea Generator Tool comes in.
This tool is super cool and so fun to use. All you do is enter your topic or keyword and hit the generate idea link.
It will generate a title idea for you and explain parts of your title and where you should make changes.
If you don't like the first suggestion, you can simply hit the refresh button a few times until you find a title that you can work with.
I've often used this tool myself when I've become stuck for a perfect catchy title for a blog post idea.
The last one on our list, but not least, is the Blog Title Generator from SEOPressor. SEOPressor makes one of the most advanced SEO plugins for WordPress; this is just another tool in their arsenal.
Use this tool to get endless catchy blog posts titles by entering your keyword, then select the type of content you want to create and hit generate titles. Give it a try and see what you come up with.
So there you have it, six awesome online tools for creating magnetic headlines for your content. Remember, you can use these tools not just for your blog posts but for your landing page headlines, email newsletter headlines, podcast shows, and videos!
Now one last thing I want to talk about quickly, and that's your title length.
If people are searching for your content using the search engines, which they will be, you want your title to be short and descriptive stand out. You don't want it to be too long, so they miss the point entirely.
Make sure, however, when you construct your headlines, you get to the point quickly.
It's OK using power words and emotional marketing and what have you, but it's also important to keep things short and sweet.
Oh, and don't forget about relevance. I can't stress enough the relevance.
I use CopyBlogger because everyone gets it.
Look at how they construct their headlines for their posts, for instance.
Most of them are super short, relevant, and make you want to click on them to read the content, right?
Hopefully, you agree.
You don't have to be CopyBlogger to achieve this for your site; use a few of the tools I've mentioned above, use your common sense, and you'll be writing winning titles for your web copy every single time.
