Draftcamp

Headline analyzer

Scores a headline on length, clarity and the words that earn a click

Runs entirely in your browser - your text is never uploaded

Type a headline to score it

Six checks, including whether it survives truncation in a search result - measured in pixels.

What makes a headline work

A headline has one job: make the right person read the next line, and make the wrong person keep scrolling. Optimising for clicks alone gets you the wrong person, a bounce, and a worse signal than if they had never arrived.

The six checks

  • Length. Six to thirteen words. Shorter rarely says enough to earn a click; longer gets skimmed.
  • Pixel width. The one that actually decides whether search shows your headline whole. Measured against a 600px Arial budget, not a character count.
  • A number. Numbers promise a shape - the reader knows what they are getting into.
  • Question or how-opener. Matches how people phrase searches, and how they phrase prompts.
  • A concrete word. Specific beats superlative. "Exact" outperforms "ultimate".
  • Stakes. Something the reader gains or avoids. Without it, the headline is a label.

What no headline tool can tell you

Whether it is true. A headline that outscores its own article is the most expensive mistake on this list, because it converts the click and loses the reader - and now the page has a bounce rate that says exactly that.

Check the title separately with the SERP preview, which renders it as Google would.

Common questions

How long should a headline be?
Six to thirteen words is the readable band, but the real constraint for a search result is pixel width, not word count. Google renders desktop titles in Arial at 20px and truncates around 600px, so a headline of wide characters gets cut before a longer one of narrow characters does.
Is this score a ranking prediction?
No, and be sceptical of any tool that claims otherwise. It checks six things that correlate with headlines people click and search engines display in full. It cannot know your audience, your brand voice, or whether the headline is true to the page underneath it.
Why is the power word list so short?
Because most power-word lists reward writing that sounds like a 2014 listicle. "Shocking", "insane" and "ultimate" made headlines worse, not better, and they read as spam to both readers and answer engines. The list here is limited to words that carry specific meaning.
Should the headline match the SEO title exactly?
They can differ, and often should. The H1 speaks to someone already on the page; the title tag competes in a result list against nine others. Write the H1 for the reader, then check the title with the SERP preview.