Headline Score

Definition

A numeric prediction of whether your headline will stop scrolling. It weighs clarity, specificity, emotional resonance, keyword match, and length. Not perfect, but good enough to catch weak headlines before they hit the page and kill your click-through rate.

Why It Matters

Your headline has maybe two seconds to earn attention. Weak ones tank CTR even when content is solid. Better headlines compound across every traffic channel—search, email, ads, social—making this one of the highest-leverage copy edits you can make.

How to Improve

• Start with the outcome your reader wants, not the journey to get there.
• Swap vague descriptors for numbers, timeframes, or specificity.
• Pit two to three variants against each other before publishing.
• On mobile, test that your main point survives in the truncated version.