Headline & standfirst studio

1. Paste the article, or a few sentences that fairly summarise it.
2. Optionally add the target keyword you want the SEO title to lead with.
3. Press Generate and read the three panels side by side.
4. Check the character count on the SEO title, look at any clickbait flags, then copy the options you want into your CMS.

Every option is grounded only in the text you paste. Treat them as drafts for an editor to choose between, not as finished furniture.

Most publishers now write at least three pieces of furniture for a single story, because the three places a story is found reward different things. Writing one headline and using it everywhere means it is a compromise in all three.

The SEO headline answers a query

This is the title tag: the line that appears in search results and in the browser tab. Its reader has already typed something into a search box, so literal beats clever every time. Lead with the subject and the words a person would actually search — the place, the organisation, the policy, the number — and keep it to about 60 characters so it is not truncated. Do not bury the subject behind a clause; do not use a pun that only makes sense after reading the story; do not stuff the same keyword twice. If your CMS appends the publication name, leave it out of the headline itself.

Good: “Council tax to rise 4.9% in Leeds from April”. Weak: “What the new budget means for you”.

The social headline interrupts a feed

Nobody was looking for this story. It has to earn a pause, so it can lead with the human detail, the specific number, the consequence or the tension the SEO headline had to leave until second place. Write in a natural, spoken register, front-load the most concrete word, and vary the register across options: one straight, one human-interest, one analytical. The rule that never bends is accuracy — a social headline may be more vivid than the SEO version, never more than the article can support. Curiosity gaps (“here's why”, “the real reason”, “you won't believe”) tend to convert once and cost trust permanently, which is expensive when your business depends on subscriptions.

The standfirst adds, it does not repeat

A standfirst — dek in American newsrooms — sits between the headline and the body and runs roughly 25–40 words. Its job is the second most important thing about the story: the scale, the timing, the context, the person affected, or what happens next. If it merely restates the headline in longer words, delete it. Write it so it stands alone, because search snippets, social cards and newsletters frequently show it without the article around it, and end it on the reason to keep reading rather than on a full stop that closes the subject.

How to test a set before you publish

Read the headline and the standfirst together and ask three questions. Does the pair promise exactly what the article delivers? Would somebody who read only these two lines come away with a true impression? Is there a concrete noun or number in the first four words? If the answer to any of them is no, the problem is usually over-claiming, and the fix is almost always a more specific fact rather than a stronger verb.

The model is instructed to write accurate, non-sensational furniture grounded only in the text you paste, to avoid over-claiming and to keep the SEO title within length. It also marks any of its own options that read as clickbait, and we run a second, local check for tabloid intensifiers, absolute claims and curiosity gaps.

Those checks are helpful, not authoritative. An AI cannot know whether a claim is defensible, whether a name is spelled correctly, or whether your title's legal guidance allows a particular characterisation. An editor should read every option against the article before it goes anywhere near publication.

Your article is not stored. It is forwarded once to the model to generate options and then discarded; we keep only anonymous usage counters so the tool can stay free.