Improve your Title Tags by 20%+

IMPROVE YOUR TITLE TAG CTR BY 20%+

How to Increase CTR by 20% Improving your Title

We know about over-optimization that Panda and the added potential that lower CTR could also cause change in ranking position in negative – and better CTR a re-ranking for the positive – it makes additional sense to assume very deliberately about our title tags and modify them far away.

During these tests with our clients, we experienced 20% or better CTR improvement for titles that have “2005” style, across multiple groups of different markets and pages.

BEST PRACTICES BEHIND THE TESTS

The ideal logic behind these tests was that there’s no longer need to write 90 keywords in your titles, and it is possible that having those keywords may actually stop you from ranking relatively more than current.

Therefore, by analyzing these long titles we can have confidence that Google should be able to understand that what you’re relevant for, once we understand that, we will then right away shine our CTR with best practices by bidding on keywords on the search results. If we’re in a competitive market, these title tags are laboured over and A/B tested into time that makes stealing their info for our uses a no-brainer.

If we compare these tests with our previous SEO title tags, there is huge scope for improvement. Many companies are still living the past and therefore are likely leaving 20% or more improvement in their traffic on the table.

CREATING A RELEVANT TEST

While you can just swap out title tags using this theory and witness a big CTR change, its still deserves up setting a testing environment to let you know the best you can.

Because true A/B testing with organic results is not possible, however we are able to set ourselves up to achieve confidence from the changes we do by evaluating the correct factors and measuring our changes against them.

In Webmaster Tools, we can track average position and also CTR for our pages for a given date range in the “Search Queries” section in the “Top pages” tab. We use pages versus queries because we need to look at the impacts on all keywords on the page, not just the head term.

Search Queries in Google Webmasters Tools

When performing a test, we should take a look at it in a week or two that which gets us 2000 or more impressions on the search results. The higher the numbers, better.

Every blow of the wind can change our confidence in the test — from a holiday weekend to seasonal treats ranking changes—so it’s important to be aware of variables that are likely to use when setting up tests.

When we change the title tags, we don’t need to note the CTR and average position at the start of the test, because Google Webmaster Tools tracks that historically, and we can find the data after the fact.
Depending on the result of your tests and/or the importance of the pages, you may want to track in a few different ways. When we’ve wanted to test an important page with high traffic, it’s best to use Webmaster Tools.

Here, you want to take note of four variables:
• Clicks
• Average Position
• Click through Rate (CTR)
• Impressions

With these, you need to match up similar date ranges more likely, two week ranges if your page has quite no visitor’s. Once you make the title tag live, you should make a note of when you first see it in the SERPs as the “starting date” for the test.

Once it’s live, it’s time to wait. When two or more weeks have passed, go back and record the data for your test by customizing the date ranges in Google Webmaster Tools in the same area mentioned previously. Compare it against the previous date range in a spreadsheet to determine how each field changed.

See the CTR changes

After you get your result you need to analyze that did your ranking increased? If CTR impacts ranking, than your more natural title tag appeared more relevant to Google. Secondarily, did your CTR and traffic go up? If CTR is up and ranking dropped slightly, it doesn’t matter. Relevant traffic is what matters.

If your CTR has grown and average position stayed flat, congrats, you certainly made a successful change. If your average position jumped solidly and so did CTR, you might not confidently determine your test was successful. Though—you have increased traffic, so it’s not worth reverting the change.

One very important thing to do is have a “control” relative to your test page. We can’t have a true control, but we can compare how position and CTR changed for the site in Webmaster Tools, or other pages similar to the one we’re testing. This can help increase confidence in our changes when we see our test page outperforms the control.

RUNNING LONG-TAIL TESTS ON PAGE TYPES

For pages without enough traffic to reasonably test, that still have a decent amount of traffic and a similar theme—such as profile pages on Moz—you can group them together to get more confidence in your changes and then test the impacts on traffic in Analytics. You can do this by creating an advanced search in GA for only those pages that will identify the traffic impact from organic across your date range.

You can create an advanced search by using the | symbol between URLs used under the Site Content -> All Pages section in Google Analytics. An example using two URLs is shown below:

Create an Advanced Search 

Once you’ve setup the segment for just those pages, you can compare date ranges from before and after you implemented the title tag change. If the improvement is big, you can have confidence in your change. If it’s down, revert. If it’s flat, probably leave as is.

Analytics Compare Data

If you do a good test working against old SEO tricks, there’s a good shot you can see 20% or better CTR increases with a good title tag improvement. This is the perfect kind of test for making big improvements.

HOW TO GENERATE IMPROVEMENTS IN CTR

We’ve noticed few patterns about what works. The title tags contain one of five elements that drive clicks, and sometimes two to three of them combined.

Five Elements in your title tags that can drive traffic

The Low Price tag is as simple as it sounds. If we’re a low price leader in the market, we should be mentioning this price in the title tag. This often comes in the form of showing the lowest price you have available across all your product/service range.

Low Prices in Titles can attract visitors

The Volume Reference shows how impressive your content is by showing the volume available to click through. E.g. If someone’s looking places to see in Delhi, it’s possible saying you had top 30 places listed might attract a click.

Volume Reference in Title

The Freshness Reference refers to showing how updated you are as a reason to drive clicks. It’s been mentioned this year that Google likes freshness—which is obvious to me based on how often showing freshness in the form of dates (such as 2014) in the title tag can actually drive clicks.

Freshness Reference in the News Section

The Speed Reference tells people things will get done quickly based on your title tag. This could be a reference to shipping, how quickly you might get a degree, or in a space like quick loans.

Speed Reference in Title

The Brand Reference is the most powerful one of all, this one drives the most clicks in the least amount of characters. If you’re LIC, just these three letters will bring some extreme weight on “insurance” SERP that no combination of other keywords could.

Brand Reference in your Title

When combined with great title ad copy, though, even LIC has the potential to drive more business to their website using one of the four other references.

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