How to Improve Title Tag CTR by 20%+

One of my favorite new actions for every new client we take on at Siege is analyzing title tags. Thereis still a glut of websites who are using 2005 title tag best practices, costing them significant profitin the process.

Given what we know about over-optimization, Panda and the added potential that lower CTR couldalso potentially cause a reranking - and better CTR a reranking for the positive - it makes even moresense to think extremely deliberately about our title tags and modify them away from our old-school titles towards a better set that can immediately pay dividends.

In doing these tests for our clients, we've often experienced 20% or better CTR improvement fortitles that have that "2005" feel, across a large sample size of markets and pages. Some are ofcourse better than others, but when you're starting from square one, there is significant room forimprovement that may be available for you as well.

Best Practices Behind the Tests

The general philosophy behind these tests is that there is no longer need to shove 90 keywords inyour titles, and in fact having those keywords may actually prevent you from ranking moreholistically.

Therefore, by removing long tail iterations we can have confidence Google should be able to figureout what you're relevant for, and instead adding irrelevant ad copy to improve CTR, we can create anet overall lift in traffic to the site.

Once we understand that, we can then immediately gleam CTR best practices from competitors (orourselves) bidding on keywords on the search results. If we're in any kind of competitive market,these title tags have been labored over and A/B tested into infinity, which makes stealing theirinformation for our uses a no-brainer.

If we compare these tests over our old school SEO title tags, there is massive room for improvement.Many companies are still stuck in the past--writing title tags that are getting rewritten or don't useany ad copy fundamentals--and therefore are likely leaving 20% or more improvement in theirtraffic on the table.

Creating a Relevant Test

While often times you can just swap out title tags using this philosophy and see a big CTR change,it's still worth setting up a testing environment to establish confidence the best you can.

Because true A/B testing with organic results is impossible, we can't do a truly accurate test, but wecan set ourselves up to gain confidence from the changes we make by evaluating the right factorsand measuring our changes against them.

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

When doing a test, we should aim to look at a window of time (generally two weeks or more) thatgets us 2000 or more impressions on the search results. The higher the number, the better.

Every gust of the wind can change our confidence in the test--from a holiday weekend to seasonalityto ranking changes--so it's important to be wary of variables like that when setting up tests.

When we change the title tags, we don't need to note the CTR and average position at the start ofthe test, because Google Webmaster Tools tracks that historically, and we can find the data after thefact.

Depending on the scale of your tests and/or the importance of the pages, you may want to track in afew different ways. When we've wanted to test an important page with high traffic, it's best to useWebmaster Tools.

Here, you want to take note of four variables:

Clicks

Average Position

Clickthrough Rate (CTR)

Impressions

With this, you'll want to also match up similar date ranges. Not Monday to Wednesday and Thursdayto Sunday--more likely, two week ranges if your page has decent traffic. Once you push the title taglive, you may want to take note of when you first see it in the SERPs as the "starting date" for thetest.

Once you see it live, it's time to wait. When two or more weeks have passed, go back and record thedata for your test by customizing the date ranges in Google Webmaster Tools in the same areamentioned previously. Compare it against the previous date range in a spreadsheet to determinehow each field changed.

When you get your numbers back, it's time to consider how confident you are that the changesbenefitted you. Did your rankings increase? This is possible, hypothetically, if CTR impacts ranking,and/or your more natural title tag appeared more relevant to Google.

Secondarily, and more obvious, did your CTR and therefore traffic go up? If CTR is up considerablyand ranking dropped slightly, it doesn't matter. Relevant traffic is what matters, not an arbitraryranking position.

If your CTR jumped considerably and average position stayed relevantly flat, congrats, you've almostcertainly made a successful change. If your average position jumped solidly and so did CTR, youmight not be able to confidently determine your test was successful. That's a first world problem,though--you have increased traffic regardless, 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 truecontrol, but we can compare how position and CTR changed for the site in Webmaster Tools, orother pages similar to the one we're testing. This can help increase confidence in our changes whenwe 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 asimilar theme--such as profile pages on Moz--you can group them together to get more confidence inyour changes and then test the impacts on traffic in Analytics. You can do this by creating anadvanced search in GA for only those pages that will identify the traffic impact from organic acrossyour 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.

Once you've setup the segment for just those pages, you can compare date ranges from before andafter you implemented the title tag change. If the improvement is big (it should be, if you do thisproperly), you can have confidence in your change. If it's down, revert. If it's flat, probably leave asis.

If you do a good test/are working against old school SEO tactics, there's a good shot you can see20% or better CTR increases with a good title tag improvement. And that's passive--I've seen pagesexperience 50%+ jumps depending on the SERP and the industry.

This is the perfect kind of test for making big improvements. If you're trying to make incremental.5% increases with organic title tags, you're in the wrong line of business--there are too manymoving parts to really have confidence in your changes.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't ever make changes with CTR in mind, but it's something toconsider for future campaigns. You're going to see the biggest gains with the first well-ran set oftests, especially if you haven't done this before.

How to Generate Improvements in CTR

Having done enough of these tests to date, there have been a few patterns we've noticed about whatworks. The title tags contain one of five elements that drive clicks, and sometimes two to three of

them combined.

The Low Price Reference is as simple as it sounds. If we're a low price leader in the market--or evencompeting for the position, we should be mentioning this price in the title tag.

This often comes in the form of noting the lowest price you have available across yourproduct/service range. "Low price" can be a reference to things that aren't directly cost related, too,such as with home mortgage rates.

The Freshness Reference refers to showing how updated you are as a reason to drive clicks. It'sbeen mentioned this year how much Google favors freshness--it seems to be dialed down a bitrecently but it only became a thing because users prefer it--which is obvious to me based on howoften showing freshness in the form of dates (such as 2014) in the title tag can actually drive clicks.

The Volume Reference shows how comprehensive and impressive your content is by showing thesheer volume available if users click through. For example, if people were looking for things to do inMiami, it's possible saying you had 122 attractions listed might attract a click.

The Speed Reference tells people interested in getting things done quickly that it will get donequickly based on your title tag. This could be a reference to shipping, how quickly you might get adegree, or in a space like PayDay Loans, how fast you can get that loan in your pocket.

The Brand Reference is the most powerful one of all, and the one that drives the most clicks in theleast amount of characters. If you're Geico, just those five letters will bring some extreme weight ona "car insurance" SERP that no combination of other keywords could.

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

Examples in Every Competitive Market

To give you a feel for what a recommended title tag change would be, showing examples of sites thatcould improve in every competitive SEO market is a good start. In our recent post listing 750popular Subreddits, we referenced the ten industries that spent the most on PPC. They will be theones we again utilize in this article.

In each industry, I will reference one site I think can improve for an extremely competitive keyword.This is not a guarantee that my recommendations will increase CTR. It is only a recommendationbased on a strong confidence interval from having tested 100s of pages in the past two years.

KW #1: "Car Insurance" - Finance Insurance

Progressive's title tag is currently getting rewritten. They have a great brand, but according toGoogle, if you search for "car insurance", all you get is "Auto Insurance - Progressive". Extremelyenticing.

As you can see from Progressive's site, it's clear they have a similar price savings offering as GEICO--they can save people $500 on average. The ad team for them, at the time of this writing, shows thathighlighting a low monthly price also helps CTR. By using this low price reference in organic, theycan likely increase CTR on an extremely valuable #1 ranking.

GEICO is doing a great job of this, and is the only person in the market using the low price referencein organic to drive clicks on the first page. However, they aren't using that monthly reference, whichis clearly important to CTR given many people in the PPC market are using it.

Recommendation for Progressive:

Old Title Tag: Auto Insurance: Get an Online Car Insurance Rate | Progressive

New Title Tag: Auto Insurance: Car Insurance from $19/mo | Progressive

See the SERP: Car Insurance on Google

You'll notice that I recommended dropping online and rate, both long tail keywords for them. Itdoesn't matter. Almost certainly, adding the ad copy that drives clicks will more than make up forthat drop--especially because Google cares less and less about keywords these days and more aboutthe user--which will be rewarded even more with a great title tag.

KW #2: "Refrigerators" - Retailers General Merchandise

In this industry, there isn't a lot of differentiation, either in PPC or in the SERPs. Lowes includes anad about 10-30% off. If we look at the shopping ads above the fold, we see that the starting price is$999, which means that if we have a decent number of products below that number, we have theopportunity to stand out.

Specifically, Lowes says they offer fridges from $399+ in their ad, which sounds like a nice pricepoint differentiator which they could use on their on SERPs--a use of the low price reference.

Lowes currently has a pretty basic title tag without much differentiation. The thing they're usingwell, though, is their brand--they know the significance and that's probably why they use it so earlyin the title tag. That doesn't mean they can't improve, though.

Recommendation for Lowes:

Old Title Tag: Refrigerators at Lowe's: Counter Depth Refrigerators, French Door Refrigerator

New Title Tag: Refrigerators at Lowe's: Shop Fridges From $399+

See the SERP: Refrigerators on Google

One counterpoint you might be thinking is "What about the targeting of Counter Depth and FrenchDoor?" That's a good point, but that's a bigger sign of optimization issues with the rest of Lowes'site, not this page.

They should have a better landing page experience for Counter Depth and French Door than ageneral refrigerators page. They should solve for that and switch to the title tag optimized for clicks.

KW #3: "Things to Do in Miami" - Travel Tourism

Looking at the SERPs for this keyword--and also thinking about the search intent for the term--theproper go-to is the volume reference. You don't want to click a result and get five things to do, whatyou want is a massive list that allows you to filter by interest to allow you to find the perfect activityfor you.

TripAdvisor does a pretty solid job of this and are the only current ones using a volume reference,but their problem is length at a whopping 68 characters.

According to Moz, the ideal title tag length is somewhere around 55 characters--you don't alwaysneed to go that short, but somewhere close makes it more likely you won't get rewritten.

With volume references, a best practice is to ping dev to auto-update your title tag with the newestnumber of said references. If you truly have a high volume, most of the time the number will beconstantly evolving, so it makes sense to have the updates be an automated process.

Recommendation for TripAdvisor:

Old Title Tag: Things to do in Miami: Check out 122 Miami Attractions - TripAdvisor (68 Characters)

New Title Tag: Things to do in Miami: 122 Miami Attractions - TripAdvisor (58 Characters)

See the SERP: Things to do in Miami on Google

KW #4: "How to Become an RN" - Jobs Education

The main differentiator for this SERP, a unique one, is time--a perfect application of the speedreference. Students who want to become a nurse--or get an education period--often want to do so inthe fastest time possible. This can be identified in the PPC listings, where some ads reference thetime it takes to get one and even offer accelerated programs.

The interesting part about this search result is that it has lots of very straightforward "How to"articles from schools. You're not going to be able to have an "RN Degree" page that will convertpeople direct, you'll have to soft sell the offering, which several schools do.

There are offerings like the above, which might drive CTR, but may not be realistic for schools topromote if that's not a realistic time for their degree program. Just because one ad has somethingshorter than your offering doesn't mean you can't see a CTR improvement by including somethinglonger in an organic title tag--we know that generally many people do ignore ads, much to Google's

chagrin.

The first result, Jacksonville University, is a good example of this. They have a very basic title tagwhich has no differentiation among other results--besides clearly being from a Universityspecializing in nursing degrees.

Recommendation for Jacksonville University:

Old Title Tag: How to Become a Registered Nurse - Steps to Become a Nurse

New Title Tag: How to Become a Registered Nurse in 24 Months - JacksonvilleU.com

See the SERP: How to Become an RN on Google

Jacksonville may have to adjust their landing page experience slightly to account for a change thatemphasizes time, but otherwise I don't see it causing them issues. On a SERP where each of the topfour results all start with "How to Become a Registered Nurse" with no other differentiation, it couldhelp them stand out and possibly even convert more potential nurses.

KW #5: "Contractors in San Diego" - Home Garden

On SERPs like this, generally the concern most searchers have is whether or not the contractor isthe best option for them out there. By referencing your comparison data using the volume reference,national companies can stand out in these search results and make it obvious that they can helpconsumers make an informed decision on their website.

For example on Houzz, they highlight the ability to browse through 2,976 local San Diegocontractors once you land on the page. You can also sort by review volume and best match, as wellas subsegment by contractor type. Their title tag, however, is not as compelling, simply using themain keyword. Why stop there?

Recommendation for Houzz:

Because of limitations, there are some issues with this title tag as ideally we'd like to get"contractors" at the end. Here, though, I think the meaning still transfers and Houzz does have anice brand in the space, so it's worth highlighting their significance in the industry.

The main needs here are to get the volume reference, the brand and the comparison capabilities allin the title tag.

KW #6: "Laptop Reviews" - Consumers Computer Electronics

With laptops--and technology--one of the prominent value-adds is in freshness. You don't care about2013 laptop reviews--you might not even care about six months ago reviews--and for that reason, thefreshness reference is a good thing to utilize as a method of showing you're worth being clicked on.

PCMag, ironically, does nothing of the sort. They are quite outdated in how they show their reviewsare relevant. For that reason, it's likely they'll lose search share to LaptopMag, which utilizesfreshness in the form of a year to their advantage.

It's possible to even do better than a year. For example, in credit card reviews, it's extremelycommon to see the season or even month referenced as a reason why their content is the most up-t--date and worth clicking.

Recommendations for PCMag.com:

Old Title Tag: Laptop Computers Notebook Reviews | Laptops Notebooks Review | PCMag.com (76Characters)

New Title Tag: Laptop Reviews - Spring 2015's Best Notebooks | PCMag.com (57 Characters)

See the SERP: Laptop Reviews on Google

It's important to note that this shouldn't be a false prophecy--you need to have Spring 2015 reviews,or you'll likely experience a poor landing page experience which quite possibly can cause Pandaissues when people bounce back to the search results when they find themselves unsatisfied withyour results. Thankfully, PCMag actually does have up to date reviews, so this title tag will result ina solid landing page experience.

KW #7: "Car Loan Rates" - Vehicles

For loans, the call to action is APR--what's the lowest APR you can get in order to save the mostmoney on your loan? So while not a traditional low price reference, the lower the percentage, themore likely you are to be interested.

However, there's a balance--brands and big banks likely can't offer an APR they can't match due tolegal reasons. So, their main CTA is going to have to be their brand power. But for leadgen playerswho offer comparison products, it's very much a possibility. In this example, Bankrate. On their carloan page, they don't immediately show the lowest rate. However, they do show averages.

Bankrate could pull from their database to retrieve the current lowest rate, or if not comfortable,they could show the average. Given nobody is using the rate in organic results, this could increaseCTR. However, players in PPC are leveraging the lowest possible rate (under 2%), so to fight firewith fire, they'd want to use a lower number, if possible.

This is one of those instances where it sometimes can be difficult to beat the PPC players because ofthe legal implications and also the reality of dynamic ad targeting plus needing to meet SEO bestpractices. But for the same reasons, because some traditional banks can't use CTR improvementslike including APR, it gives websites like Bankrate an advantage they can leverage.

Recommendations for Bankrate.com:

Old Title Tag: Auto Financing: Compare Car Loan Rates Get Auto Loan Advice

New Title Tag: Auto Financing: Compare Car Loan Rates From 2% - Bankrate

See the SERP: Car Loan Rates on Google

KW #8: "Web Hosting" - Internet Telecom

Web hosting pricing is a race to the bottom and many of us, those frequent browsers of the web, areworse off for it. Despite that, if you work in hosting, you'd be remiss to ignore said race. You need toutilize the low price reference in order to drive more clicks to your website.

As we can determine from the PPC listings, low price is the call to action of the day--of the monthlyvariety. In order to determine the right price reference to use--monthly, daily, yearly, etc.--it's best toconsider how your industry prices. In hosting, people compare based on the monthly cost. If in yourindustry (such as mortgage) the point of reference is the 30-year interest rate then that's the

differentiator you should use as your low price reference.

As mentioned, it's the monthly reference here that makes the most sense. GoDaddy purports a$1/month hosting package in their sidebar, which means they should be able to leverage similar inthe organic listings. Combined with their brand strength, there's no reason they shouldn't beranking #1 over SiteGround.

Recommendations for GoDaddy:

Old Title Tag: Web Hosting | Lightning Fast Hosting One Click Setup - GoDaddy

New Title Tag: Web Hosting from $1/mo One Click Setup - GoDaddy

See the SERP: Web Hosting on Google

KW #9: "Business Cards" - Business Industrial

In the business cards space, there's a combination of the volume reference and the low pricereference that's needed. People want a good number of business cards, and they also want them forcheap. You can see this usage heavily in ad copy being used in prominent positions.

And not surprisingly, this same smart ad copy is not being used by the players in top organicpositions, likely costing them a good amount of traffic. Vistaprint themselves is the perfect example--ranking #1 but with no reference to the variables that are clearly working for them in ads.

One thing to be aware of in situations like this is sometimes advertisers may be more aggressivewith pricing in an ad versus on an SEO landing page, so Vistaprint might not be quite as comfortablepushing the super low price in organic. So, I suggest using the "from" price below as it doesn't

guarantee the price, although it's clear you can get cards at that rate on the site.

Recommendations for Vistaprint:

Old Title Tag: Business Cards - Customized Affordable | Vistaprint

New Title Tag: Business Cards - 500 Customized Cards From $9.99 | Vistaprint

See the SERP: Business Cards on Google

KW #10: "Wedding Favors" - Occasions Gifts

For the uninformed, wedding favors are those gifts you give to all your guests as a thank you forcoming to your wedding. By nature, for those with big weddings, getting these affordably whereverpossible is preferred. So, the low price reference is a positive and can be used easily--even though itisn't currently in any organic SERP. Missed opportunity.

Recommendations for David's Bridal

Old Title Tag: Personalized Wedding and Reception Favors - Davids Bridal

New Title Tag: Personalized Wedding Favors from 35¢ Each - Davids Bridal

See the SERP: Wedding Favors on Google

This is also a unique situation in the case of David's Bridal. You might look at their title tag and thinkthat the lost KW optimization of reception favors might hurt them. Decent point, but if you researchthe search volume for reception favors, it's around 500 a month in total volume.

Compare this to wedding favors, which is around 50,000. The benefit of getting even slightly1% more traffic from the core set of keywords would make up for the the loss. Also, as mentionedabove, it's possible the improvement could be 20% or more--sometimes as high as a 100% increase.

Why Isn't This Being Done More?

In general, improving title tag CTR in organic SERPs isn't done nearly as often as it should. Much ofthat comes from SEOs being stuck in older practices of keyword optimization and not moving fastenough into the new world where optimization matters less as Google gets better and better withunderstanding topics.

Similarly, many SEOs are better technicians than they are traditional marketers--understandingwhat drives more clicks is often a different game than understanding user psychology.

The good "new world" SEOs, though, will understand improving CTR in organic results is the way togo. It can make quick, massive impacts to the bottom line and it can help with other metrics thatmay actually improve ranking, such as improving potential brand signals for your business.

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