Do you work painfully over the headlines of your blog posts, and still feel doubtful about their performance?
Do you take much more time writing a headline than you take while writing an entire blog post?
Well, the good news is that you are not alone, who feels this way. Most blog writers have a tough time writing attention-grabbing headlines.
Several researches point towards the fact that people are not reading anything anymore. They are only skimming through. 80% of the people who visit your blog site will just skim through and look only for a catchy headline. If they find one, they will perhaps stay longer and even read it partially.
No matter how good a writer you are, and no matter how many efforts you put in crafting that perfect blog post, no one will read it if they do not feel sufficiently emotionally aroused by the title or headline.
Some studies show that your chances of retaining your site visitors, and making your posts go viral are enhanced by almost 500% if the headline of your post is catchy.
So, just imagine if you have lots of articles with catchy and emotionally driven headlines, how skyrocketing your site ratings will become.
Back in my copywriting days, I used to sometimes throw away several headlines, just to reach to that sterling winner. Creating good, catchy and emotionally charged headlines can be a real challenge for even the best copywriters.
Now that blogging has become a great business opportunity available to all, and the challenge of retaining the visitors to your website is mounting with every passing day, how do you create a good headline?
Here are The Top FREE Headline Generators that I like best. They are in no particular order. You can just go through them as you like…
1) CoSchedule:
CoSchedule is one of my personal favourite tools when it comes to analyzing the headlines.
CoSchedule offers you deep insights into the words that appeal to your readers. Since most readers are skimmers, it takes a lot of efforts to get them to read your headlines and feel sufficiently attracted to go through your blog posts.
CoSchedule offers you detailed analysis of the sentiments of your titles. It also gives you keywords based on your headline.
You can generate as many headlines you possibly wish, and CoSchedule keeps giving you the results of their analysis. All the headlines generated by you are stored on the screen. You can keep comparing the results that you get this way. If you wish to return to a headline that you had generated previously, all you need to do is to click on it, and you jump directly to it.
This saves a lot of time and effort.
The CoSchedule headline analyzer tool gives you results on –
- The basic nature of your headline, meaning, what kind of a title it is – like if it is a “list type” title or a “how-to” type title.
- The tool also analyzes the number of characters in your title and the click-through rates you can get.
- CoSchedule tells you that titles which are 55 characters long, give you the best click-through rates.
- It also tells you how long your titles should ideally be, which receive the best click-through rates.
Look what results I got while researching for that perfect headline for this article that you are reading right now.
CoSchedule analyses each word of your headline and gives you a detailed analysis of all the words used in it. This gives you an exact idea as to what to change to get a higher click-through rate.
CoSchedule also gives you the word balance and a complete analysis of what kinds of words are there in your headline.
Have a look –
2) Emotional Headline Analyzer from Advanced Marketing Institute:
This is another one of my favourite tools for analyzing the blog headlines.
Emotional Headline Analyzer from Advanced Marketing Institute gives you a clear analysis of whether the headline you have created will give you the much needed emotional impact on your readers.
The headlines that appeal to the emotional, intellectual and spiritual side of your readers are most likely to get clicked, and also to get shared on social media platforms.
See the result that I had received on my headline research.
This is also a very simple tool to use even if you have no technical knowledge. All you need to do is type your headline, and select the category under which your post belongs, and submit for analysis. The tool gives you immediate results.
According to the research done by Advanced Marketing Institute if you receive a score of anything above 30% it is excellent.
The scoring is done on the Emotional Marketing Value (EVM). This is an indicator of how much your headline has the potential of getting shared on social media platforms. Having a headline with a higher EVM score means a higher potential.
The tool gives a short but clear explanation of its analysis also, which you will find quite useful.
3) BlogAbout:
BlogAbout is an ideal tool for getting new ideas and also generating great headlines for your blog post.
It is created by Impact and the main objective of it is to flood your mind with a variety of ideas on a variety of topics.
Not only can you generate amazing titles for your next blog post but you can also generate a series of titles, which you can use later.
You can press the heart icon and just store all the titles you generate. These can then be emailed to you.
An interesting feature, which the copywriter in me likes a lot is the doodling feature. If you click on the “Writer’s Block” button placed on the right, you can open a doodling pad. This is a cool feature as all the copywriters I have known in my life just love to doodle. Many keep doodling for hours before they come up with a great headline.
So you can have fun doodling away while thinking of those marvelous ideas and topics.
Kudos to BlogAbout! You truly understand a writer’s mind.
4) TweakYourBiz:
TweakYourBiz is one of the best tools because of its straightforward approach. You just enter your keywords and press “Submit” and the tool just goes about generating numerous headlines.
The variety of titles generated are just enormous.
- It gives you list type headlines like “List of …”
- It gives you headlines like “Best of …”
- It gives you “How to” type headlines.
- It gives you Questions type headlines.
- It gives you headlines that drive strong emotional triggers also
And, all this happens with just a press of a button.
Look at the variety of titles TweakYourBiz generated for me when I inserted the keywords “Attention-Grabbing Blog Headlines”.
5) Inbound Now:
Inbound Now is a rather simple tool. All you need to do is just keep clicking and inserting your chosen keywords. Then you get several variants that you can use as a title for your blog post.
You will be amazed at some of the variants that come up with your keywords. This gives plenty of new ideas also, which you can just save in a doc file and use later.
Since all the titles generated are SEO friendly, you can be assured of using them as you please.
Inbound Now also has a button called “Need More Inspiration”. This feature gives you a list of articles already published on Ezine.
The drawback of Inbound Now can be that it can generate one headline at a time only. So, you just keep clicking till you reach the one that you like.
6) SEOPressor:
SEOPressor is another good tool for generating good headlines instantly. This tool not just gives you the results with your keywords, it filters these keywords and asks you to segregate your keywords into the following –
- Is a generic term
- Is a brand / product
- Is an event
- Is an industry
- Is a location
- Is a person’s name
- Is a skill
SEOPressor gives you very narrow niche related headlines, which are also keywords driven. This is the dual benefit, which you get running immediately and can have several options.
Look what SEOPressor pulled out for me with my keywords “Attention-Grabbing Blog Headlines”.
The above are all free tools. They are all excellent tools and work very well. Now I give you a paid tool, which requires a one-time payment and can automate headline generation for your blogs.
According to the creators of Thrive Headline Analyzer bloggers have only 2.6 seconds to retain the attention of their site visitors. So the more powerful your headlines are the more your traffic will stay on your website.
Thrive Headline Analyzer helps you in analyzing several headlines side by side so that you can choose the best one that suits your requirements.
This WordPress plugin tracks the behaviour of users and visitors to your website. it works on analyzing and assessing the user behaviour based on several engagement factors like the time they spend in viewing your content, scrolling behaviour, click-through rates, mouse movement, etc.
Thrive Headline Analyzer is quite simple to use. All you need to do is put your headline options in the editor tool and the plugin does all the A/B testing.
You can analyze your headlines after you start receiving some traffic. Then you can do a cross-check and change your headline, seeing the headline option that performs better than the others.
You can pay for Thrive Themes membership at $19/month, billed annually.
With your membership you will receive the Thrive Headline Analyzer and also all the other plugins and the themes.
Or if you don’t wish for this recurring option, you can take the Thrive Headline Analyzer as a standalone option for a one-time payment of $ 67 for one website; $ 97 for five websites; and $ 147 for fifteen websites.
These are some of the best available tools that work and help you create wonderful headlines for your blog posts.
As a copywriter having many years of experience I still say that using your instincts while writing a headline is always a good idea.
These tools can help you a lot as they give you an understanding about the performance of your headlines in the actual marketplace. Still, the human element is extremely important under all the situations. So you should also pay close attention to your own instincts and gut feelings while crafting your blog headlines.
Some best types of headlines are –
- List type headlines.
- “How To” type headlines.
- “Why” type headlines like – “Why Should…”.
- Headlines containing positive superlative words like – “Most Important”, “Topmost”. “Highest” etc.
- Headlines containing negative superlative words like – “Avoid”, “Don’t”, “Never” etc.
- Precise and clear headlines which show the exact nature of your post.
Conclusion:
With years of copywriting experience, my personal suggestion to you is to get clear about your thoughts first. Be sure about what you wish to write about. Then go about writing a few variations of the headline that seem best suited to the post that you have decided to create.
After this start using the tools to see how your created headlines may perform with your target audience. Use these tools as a supplement to your creativity and not just as something that you should rely upon completely.
