I often think of a blog post title as a storefront. If a storefront isn’t inviting enough, people would simply pass it by without ever going in. Similarly, if a blog post title isn’t captivating enough, people would skip to a different and better title, and click on that instead.

As a content creator, you want your title to be that better and more captivating one so that people click on yours over anyone else’s.

To that end, one tool can make a blogger’s life a lot better, easier, smarter, and more importantly, efficient. This blog post is about that tool: CoSchedule Headline Studio.

Don’t get me wrong. No tool by itself can help you write stellar titles. You have to work on that yourself. You have to know the building blocks of a great blog post title and you must learn to craft one without the help of any tool. But once you have a working title, that’s when CoSchedule Headline Studio can really take things to the next level.

I like to compare this tool with another tool I love—Grammarly. Grammarly itself won’t make you a good writer, but it will help you fine-tune your writing and take things to the next level.

CoSchedule Headline Studio is just like that, and more! Let me show you what I mean.

CoSchedule Headline Studio Basics

I’d like to start by giving you a “tour” of this tool, followed by a brief showcase (or tutorial?) of how I personally use Headline Studio to craft my titles for this blog.

But first, a little about CoSchedule Headline Studio Pro. This premium subscription offers different tiers based on how many headlines you want to analyze per month (5, 10, 20, 60, etc.) Each headline gives you 25 analyses. The assumption is that you should be able to improve upon your title within 25 tries. Depending on how often you write, you can choose the number of headlines you want. For example, I’m on the 10 headline/month plan. That’s plenty for me as I mostly publish once a week, twice at most.

What is CoSchedule Headline Studio?

It’s software designed by CoSchedule (the marketing organizer/calendar) to help content creators come up with stellar, clickable headlines.

CoSchedule Headline Studio features I love

Let’s talk about what this tool can do.

It takes your original headline and gives it two separate scores: Headline score and SEO score.

The headline score is based on how clickable it is. The software takes into account the length of the title or headline (in this scenario the two words are interchangeable), word choices, headline structure, and gives it a score. The higher your score, the better the headline. A score of over 70 (the highest possible score is 100) is marked as “green,” which represents a good headline. Your goal should be to score at least over 70 with all of your blog post titles.

The SEO score represents how well your headline performs against similar real-world headlines. Honestly, this is by far my most favorite feature of this tool. In short, the tool analyzes your title, compares it to similar titles in similar topics (based on the keywords it recognizes in your title) that are already out there, and then gives you a score based on how well it thinks your title compares with the rest.

In fact, the tool even shows you what other titles (and blog posts) you are competing with. I’ll be doing an in-depth review of this feature shortly, but for now, I just want to point out that this is the feature that I love the most and I think it’s worth every dollar I spent signing up for CoSchedule Headline Studio Pro.

How I’ve Been Using CoSchedule Headline Studio

As I’ve mentioned above, CoSchedule Headline Studio scores your titles for two things: the headline’s readability/clickability, and its SEO. But before you get to the scores, you have to craft the title. As I’ve said before, this tool doesn’t automatically write a great title for you. To get the most out of it, you have to know how to write a really good blog post title first, and then let the tool analyze it and give you suggestions.

Improve headline and SEO scores with CoSchedule Headline Studio

Here’s a step-by-step process I use to improve on my headline until I have a score of at least 70 or above for both the headline and SEO scores. Note that you can see the SEO score only if you have CoSchedule Headline Studio Pro. Trust me, it’s totally worth it!

1. First things first, write a decent blog post title focusing on the main topic. Then, go to CoSchedule Headline Studio, log in to your account, and insert your headline in the designated area.

If you accidentally close the browser or have to go in the middle of working on a title, don’t worry; the tool saves old versions in your account. As you can see in the image above, on the left-hand side of the screen, you can access “recent” headlines. You can pick up a title exactly where you left off.

2. When you hit the “Analyze” button, it takes a couple of seconds to spit out all the data. It’s crazy how fast it analyzes so much data! not only it gives you a headline score with detailed breakdowns, but the SEO score tab has a lot of super-valuable data that we’re about to see.

3. The results page shows you two separate tabs: The headline score tab and the SEO score tab. I like to go back and forth between the two as I work on improving my headline. But I do prefer starting with the SEO score tab. This tab shows me possible keywords that the tool has derived from my title, and then it shows the following data:

• keyword quality
• keyword density
• average monthly searches
• search competition
• keyword trend

For me, I don’t pay too much attention to these because chances are that I’ve already looked up those data from Google keyword planner and Google trends when I was researching the blog post I’m about to write.

The next item you see on that page is “search preview.” This is nice because it gives me an idea of what the title would look like in Google’s SERP (Search Engine Result Page.)

But the next section is what I’m really interested in — the “headline competition.”

4. This tool does a good job of pulling similar headlines, so you can have a good idea of who you’re competing against. Sometimes this information is redundant if I’ve already done my research. But other times I may come across a title I didn’t see before, and I’d click on it to go to that page and see what my competitor has to say. This can inform my own blog post. Sometimes I may even end up reworking some of the actual content of my post based on this information.

5. At this point, I’d typically switch back to the headline score tab, and rework the title until I have something I’m happy with. The three things I pay attention to here are:

• word balance
• word count
• character count

6. Typically, you’d want your title’s word count to be around 9 – 15 words, and your character count to be between 60 – 80. Basically, you want these parameters to be in the green zone (refer to the image below.)

7. Word balance is another parameter I pay attention to. Ideally, the headline score improves if you have a mix of different types of words:

• common words (articles, prepositions, adverbs, and certain commonly occurring nouns and verbs too.)
• uncommon words (words that do not appear often.)
• emotional words (words that evoke strong emotions in the reader’s mind. Think: Words that scare them, give them hope, make them feel optimistic, etc.)
• power words (typically words that compel the readers to take action.)

The example I’ve used in the screenshots was a lucky coincidence where I managed to have all these different types of words in one single title. I don’t get that lucky with all of my titles and that’s OK. Because nobody gets that lucky. And not all topics can even have all these types of words.

I’d recommend you pay attention to writing a clear and concise title than a wordy title just so you can score higher on CoSchedule. Use your common sense and judgment to determine when a word enriches your title, and when it adds unnecessary fluff.

That being said, having at least one power word or emotional word in your title can significantly improve its clickability.

Pro tip: Notice in the screenshot that under each type of word, there’s a link that says “open word bank.” When you click it, it opens up a new panel on the right of the screen with a list of that specific type of word.

8. Once you rework a title, simply hit the “Reanalyze” button to see the new and, hopefully, improved scores. You can do this up to 25 times for a single headline. If you need more tries than that, just go back to the main page and start a new analysis for a new title. (Remember, depending on your subscription tier, you can only analyze a set number of titles per month. Each new title can have up to 25 revisions.)

CoSchedule Headline Studio Browser Extension

There’s a browser extension for Chrome (and Firefox too, I believe) that allows you to open the CoSchedule Headline Studio app on one side of the browser, as an overlay on top of whatever website you have opened at the time (refer to the image below.)

Personally, I prefer to just open the app on a separate window (I have Headline Studio bookmarked.) But if you’re the browser extension kind of person, then feel free to get it here.

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If you’re a serious blogger, I highly recommend investing in this tool. Seriously, the headline score is one thing, but that SEO score is just so, so, so nice to have!

Trust me guys, a blog post title is super important for all bloggers and content creators. Getting it right can significantly change your blog’s click-through rate. CoSchedule Headline Studio is one of those blogging tools that are 100% worth investing in.

If the pricing seems a bit too steep, there are ways to save:

• You can write a review of CoSchedule Headline Studio on your blog (or do a video review on YouTube or Facebook) and get 50% off an annual subscription. What’s more, you can do a review every year to continue getting a 50% discount on annual subscriptions.
• You can join CoSchedule’s affiliate program and earn a commission when someone becomes a paid subscriber of any CoSchedule product (Headline Studio or Marketing Calendar.)

You can find the full scope of discounts on CoSchedule Headline Analyzer on this page.

Seriously, folks, if you can afford it, GET IT!