There are articles everywhere telling you that the average Internet user will only give their attention to a search result listing or article/post title for one to three seconds before making a decision. In that very short time period, you will either get that click and business or lose them, perhaps, forever.

You’re likely familiar with the term “click bait.” In today’s world of Tweets, social site posts, and search engine competition, getting the attention of a reader is tougher than ever. There is a term that may be more valuable in creating an effective title or headline; it’s less of a baiting tactic and more of offering an “appetizer.”

There is an online tool to help you craft a title or headline that grabs the viewer’s attention and encourages them to take action. It’s an appetizer that makes them hungry for what you’re offering. At aminstitute.com/headline, the American Marketing Institute offers their free to use Headline Analyzer tool. This tool lets you enter titles and get a score for how effective they will be based on three appeals to the viewer; Intellectual, Emotional, and Spiritual.

A number of studies went into the development of the tool and how people react to certain words, title length, and other factors. The scoring system goes from 0% to 100%. Most professional copywriters are said to score between 30% and 40%, while only the very best consistently score over 50%. Most business owners and marketers usually have scores between 10% and 25% for their titles and headlines.

The best way to illustrate this is in how the title of this article came about. Sometimes it takes a dozen or more tries to get a high-scoring headline, but in this case, it took only three, and here are the test titles and scores:

• “How to Write Headlines that Get Clicks” scored 14.29%.
• “Headlines that Get the Action You Want” scored 28.57%.
• “The Headline for When You Absolutely Need a Click” scored 44.44%.

You see why that last one was chosen. The scoring result explains the areas in which the title appeals to people and why. This title did well in the Intellectual and Spiritual areas. What do you think about the three test titles and do you think that the highest rated headline used for this article had something to do with your click other than just offering information?

Often, writing a blog post or article for a business website or social site can take a lot of time and effort. It’s certainly worth another few minutes to use a free tool to start it off right with the best headline you can create for the result you want. Using Twitter as a headline tool to direct traffic to your site or post is even more dependent upon grabbing the attention of a viewer in a few words. Up your game with the best title or headline possible.