How to Boost Your Headline Score Using Premium Features in Headline Studio

One of these two headlines scored 26 points higher than the other in Headline Studio. Can you guess which one? If you guessed the second headline was the higher-scoring one…you’re right! And it actually started out as the first headline. To increase our headline score by 26 points, we did just one thing: We analyzed it using premium features in Headline Studio. It’s the one and only way to reach those high scores and get more traffic, more clicks, and better results from your headline. If you want higher scoring headlines, look no further. We created this ultimate guide to walk you through Headline Studio’s premium features—and how to use them to boost your score.

Let’s start with that first headline: 10 Ways to Write Headlines

Headline Studio gives this headline a score of 57. Which roughly translates to…meh. But we can take that headline from meh to marvelous with the help of a few premium features in Headline Studio. Premium Features in Headline Studio:

• Headline Suggestions
• Word Banks
• SEO Score
• SEO Suggestions
• Keyword Explorer
• Thesaurus
• Versions & Favorites
• Headline Competition

Premium Feature: Headline Suggestions

Improve Your Word Balance with Headline Suggestions

The Word Balance report tells you how balanced your headline is based on the types of words you used. When your headline strikes the right balance of common, uncommon, emotional, and power words, it’ll score higher and perform better.   Our headline is missing power words specifically, so adding one or two will definitely increase our score. But how do you know which words even qualify as power words? Your Word Bank will tell you.

Premium Feature: Word Bank

Find more score-boosting words in Word Bank

When you need to increase your headline score, Headline Studio’s premium Word Banks are pure gold. They provide you with hundreds of common, uncommon, emotional, and power words to improve your headline.  These are examples of actual word replacements that will improve your headline score, based on tons of industry data. You can also go directly to your Word Bank in the Toolbox on the right side. For our headline, Headline Studio recommends we add more words, specifically Power Words. As you browse through words, you can see that some of the words are marked with a red sad face or a green smiley face. This marks which words are positive or negative.  Our Headline Suggestions also recommend that we add more emotionally positive or negative words, so let’s choose one with a green smiley face because our blog is positive. With the help of Word Banks, we select the word “Amazing.” It is a power word with a positive emotion. After reanalyzing our headline, our score has increased by 15 points to 72. Our headline score is now in the green, but we can still do better.

Premium Feature: SEO Score

See a full SEO report on your headline, including its keyword topics and search competition

Now I’m sure you’ve been wondering what the score next to your headline score is. Let’s take a dive into our SEO score tab.  This tab collects data from all other blog headlines that are similar to yours and lets you see how your headline stacks up against the competition in search engine results.  The SEO Score tab consists of many amazing tools that help score your headline and show you how to potentially improve your SEO Score.  Headline Studio analyzes and ranks the keywords you use as well as suggests other keywords you could use to potentially boost your headline’s SEO ranking. Along with your SEO score, it also analyzes and ranks your headline’s score in comparison to others. Check out how our headline ranks to others:  

Premium Features: SEO Suggestions

The SEO Score tab will also give you suggestions on how to improve your score, just like the Headline Score tab. You can use these SEO Suggestions to increase your SEO score and potentially rank higher in search results. Let’s take a look at our suggestions: One of our suggestions is to use longer, more specific keywords, so let’s open our Keyword Explorer!

Premium Feature: Keyword Explorer

See the performance data behind each keyword to know which ones will help your headline climb the search rankings.

Located in the Toolbox on the right-hand side, the Keyword Explorer displays detailed performance data behind each of your keywords & discover which ones will perform best in your headline. You can search for new or alternate keyword topics that will help your headline rank higher in search results. Headline Studio wants us to make “10 Ways” longer, so let’s see some ideas. Let’s take a look at one of the examples we found: “10 Easy Ways to Save Mother Earth”. We could change our headline to “10 Easy Ways to Create Amazing Content”, but how do we know "Easy" will positively affect our headline? Let’s head over to another amazing feature: the Thesaurus.

Premium Feature: Word Bank + Thesaurus

Find Synonyms That Increase Your Score in the Thesaurus

The Thesaurus is located just above the word Banks in the Toolbox. You can search any word to reveal its definition and multiple synonyms.  Why is using Headline Studio’s standard feature thesaurus with the premium Word Bank feature so amazing? Along with definition and synonyms, a quick search in Headline Studio’s premium Thesaurus will mark powerful, emotional, common, and uncommon synonyms that will increase your score and drive people to click on your blog. Let’s see if “Easy” will positively affect our score. Our search results reveal that “Easy” is a Power Word. This is a great thing, but not for us. We don’t need any more Power Words. Let's see if we can find an Emotional synonym. It looks like “Simple” is an Emotional Word. Let’s plug it into our headline! After reanalyzing our headline, our score has increased again and is now 78.

Premium Features: Versions & Favorites

Reanalyze Your Headline to See Your Past Versions & Favorites

Once you’ve reanalyzed your headline, you might be wondering…will your past headlines disappear forever? What if I liked my old version better? Fortunately not, thanks to Versions. It’s a premium feature that keeps track of all of your past versions of each headline, so you can revisit them anytime. Here’s an example of what past versions of our headline look like: Notice that little gold star next to our most recent headline? That’s a Favorite: a headline we starred because it’s our highest scoring headline yet. Your favorite headlines will always stay at the top of your list for easy access.

Premium Feature: Headline Competition

See the top-performing headlines that compete with yours in search engine results.

Let’s do one more thing with our headline to increase the Headline Score and the SEO Score. One of our suggestions is to increase the length of our headline, so let’s look for some inspiration in the SEO Score tab. Along with comparing us with our competition, the SEO Score tab also shows you high performing headlines from your competition. You can easily scope out your top headline competitors in search results without leaving the page (You may even be able to swipe some ideas from high-scoring headlines!). Let’s borrow the last part of the third headline: “Content that Readers Love”, and repurpose it for our headline. Our headline now reads “10 Simple Ways to Write Amazing Headlines Your Readers Will Love.” Our headline score has increased and our SEO Score has skyrocketed to 72!

And now for the final reveal…

Our headline score BEFORE using premium features:

Our headline score AFTER using premium features:

We officially increased our score by a whopping 26 points with the help of a few premium features in Headline Studio! Our headline is now primed and ready to get maximum clicks, shares, and engagement.  

Now it’s your turn to boost your score in Headline Studio

Head over to Headline Studio and use these premium features to instantly increase your own headline scores. If you haven’t signed up for Headline Studio yet, get started free. P.S. Want more helpful headline writing tips? Check out the Learn tab inside Headline Studio for more headline-related blogs and resources.