The Simplified Guide to Title Testing for SEO

This guide is my trimmed-down version of a much bigger and more comprehensive guide called, “SEO Title Testing: Everything You Actually Need to Know.”

If you want to level-up your title testing skills, head over to the in-depth guide. Or, if you’ve only got a few minutes, then you’re in the right place.

Why is Title Tag Testing Valuable for SEO?

It’s my belief that title tag optimization remains at the top of SEO’s lowest-hanging fruit opportunities, even now as Google has taken more liberties to rewrite page titles.

Still, page title testing remains one of the least-time-consuming actions that SEOs can take to impact traffic and rankings.

On top of that, page titles are still considered one of (if not “the”) top on-page ranking factors, next to content.

Putting two and two together, SEOs generally find a lot of low-effort / high-reward growth opportunities through page title testing.

How to Test Your Titles: The Basic Process

Here’s what a basic testing process looks like for an individual page title test.

1. Identify your top title optimization opportunities and prioritize them by URL.
2. Conduct SERP analysis on the top keyword(s) to understand search intent and analyze the top-ranking pages.
3. Build a crystal-clear hypothesis for your test.
4. Write a new page title that supports your hypothesis.
5. Launch your test by publishing and indexing the new page title.
6. Benchmark the current page performance data.
7. Wait at least 2-3 weeks.
8. Analyze your results & end the test.

Let’s walk through each of these steps in more detail.

1. Identifying & Prioritizing Title Tag Test Opportunities

In reality, there are dozens of ways to discover title testing opportunities on a website but these two methods are most common.

Method 1: Best for under-optimized websites.

1. Build a spreadsheet with your website’s URLs and corresponding page titles. You can do this by:
   1. Usually by crawling your website with a tool like ScreamingFrog, or other SEO crawler.
   2. Export a list from another online tool like Ahrefs, Moz, or SEMRush
   3. Exporting the titles and URLs from your CMS, which may require some help from a developer.
2. Scan the sheet for the obvious opportunities, missing titles, bad titles, short titles, missing keywords, etc.

Method 2: Best for mature, previously-optimized websites.

1. Go to your performance report in Google Search Console.
2. Click on the “Average CTR” & “Average position” buttons. 
3. Export your report to Excel or Google Sheets.
4. On the “queries” tab, add an “Available Clicks” column and subtract the “Clicks” column from the “Impressions” in your new column. 
5. This new column will not give you the URLs to optimize, but it will give you the best queries (primary keywords) to prioritize your optimizations around.
6. Once you identify the keywords that score high for available clicks, locate the corresponding URL(s) for title testing.

2. SERP Analysis for Title Testing & Optimization

Would you go to war without studying your battlefield?

If not, why wing it with your SEO strategy?

Just doing a bit of SERP analysis can take your testing hypothesis from good to GREAT!

Questions to ask yourself while analyzing the SERPs

• What major trends are you seeing in titles for the top 10 results? Top 3?
• Can your website compete for the keyword?
• Is the search intent branded or unbranded?
• Is the audience here top of funnel, middle of funnel, or bottom of funnel?
• What value can your page or website offer that others cannot?
• Can you craft a title that speaks more directly to users’ search intent than the competing page titles?
• What would make your title tag stand apart from the crowd?
• What SERP features is Google displaying outside of the ten blue links?

Getting good at SERP analysis really boils down to observation skills.

3. Establishing a Clear & Measurable Hypothesis for Your Test

Changing your page titles without creating a hypothesis is a lot like throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping it sticks. Sometimes the “spaghetti on wall” method works, but even in those cases when it does, you’ll learn far more with a clear hypothesis than you will without one.

The formula for a great title testing hypothesis looks like this:

Changing my page meta title from X to Y will _____.

The two questions you should be asking yourself right now are: What exactly are you aiming to achieve with your test? And how are you going to measure it?

Here are the most common testing hypotheses I’ve used:

• Changing my title from X to Y will help my page rank higher for the primary keyword.
• Changing my title from X to Y will increase CTR for my primary keyword.
• Changing my title from X to Y will increase the average CTR across all keywords for the page.
• Changing my title from X to Y will increase the total number of clicks to my landing page.

Measuring Your Test

Another massive benefit to creating a clear hypothesis is the ability to clarify exactly which metrics you will use for benchmarking and measuring the test results.

Are you aiming for higher rankings on a single keyword? Benchmark & measure against the target keyword ranking.

Is overall URL traffic more important to you than the primary keyword? Benchmark and measure clicks to your URL.

Are you testing to improve CTR? Same deal for CTR.

For the vast majority of tests, the Google Search Console Performance Report is the best data source for benchmarking and measuring clicks, impressions, CTR, and keyword positions.

4. How to Write KILLER Title Tag Experiments

There is no “right way” to optimize a title tag, but there are a zillion ways to screw one up. So before we dive into best practices and new optimization ideas, here are a few of the most common mistakes people make with page titles:

• Your title tag is missing/empty. (pretty obvious)
• Your title tag is devoid of your pages primary keyword.
• Your title tag is stuffing keywords.
• Your title tag is auto-generated by your CMS to only include the page name. (ex. “Home – Domain.com”)
• Your title tag is duplicated across multiple pages. (When everyone is a hero, no one is.)
• Your title doesn’t match search intent.
• Your title doesn’t match the actual page content.

Character Count

Google will typically truncate page titles at the following pixel counts for each of the following devices:

*Note: Your meta title does not actually have to fit within a specific character count.

• Desktop – 545 pixels
• iPhone X/6/7/8 – 375 pixels
• iPhone 6/7/8 Plus/Pixel 2 – 411 pixels
• iPhone 5/SE – 320 pixels
• Galaxy Note & S3+ – 360 pixels
• LG Optimus 370 – 384 pixels
• Nexus 5X – 412 pixels

Pro tip: Try this bulk title tag checker to check the pixel width for a list of titles.

Okay, onto the really good stuff…

Must-Do Best Practices For Any Decent Page Title

At a bare, bare minimum, your titles should:

• Include your primary keyword
• Establish a powerful tie between the search intent and your on-page content
• Set the tone for what users are going to see when they get to your page
• Place your brand or website name at the end of the title tag with a separator

8 Ideas for Writing KILLER Title Tag Variants

Beyond the bare minimum, these are some of our most killer best-practices and trends among powerful page titles:

1. Test keyword placement locations.

People navigate quickly on search, so if your keyword is at the end, it’s likely to get less attention than at the beginning, where people are more likely to make the connection between their search and your page relevance. There is also some debate about this as a ranking factor. Even if that isn’t the case today, re-prioritizing your keyword to the front can be a very positive optimization. Test this for yourself to see if your title performs better with your target keyword placed at the front, middle, or end of your title tag.

Example:

2. Use parentheses () or brackets [].

Parentheses and brackets are very strategic for adding context mid-title and as an added bonus, they often help your result get a little more attention by drawing the users’ eyes to your search result.

Example:

3. Deliver on a second promise to touch secondary search intents.

People sometimes search with a secondary search intent that the keyword itself won’t tell you. If you search for animal charities, you might also want to know which charities are the most effective. Or if you do a search for “what is keyword research” with intentions of starting your first keyword research project.

Searching this way means you’ve got an explicit search intent that is obvious from the keyword alone, but there might also be a less-obvious implicit search intent that compliments the explicit search intent. If you can go above and beyond by discovering and addressing these secondary implicit intents in corresponding page titles, this test has a tendency to earn and dominate top positions.

Example:

4. Add keyword modifiers to grow the long-tail.

Beyond every primary keyword is a whole world of long-tail variations. These variations often get missed when you optimize for one keyword, and one keyword only. To find them, try digging into more research tools or check your Google Search Console performance report to decipher which modifiers are most-commonly-searched. Then add one to your title to see if you can capture more long-tail traffic.

Example:

5. Add synonyms and keyword variants (but don’t overdo it).

This one can get dicey if you’re overdoing it, so let’s be very clear: DO NOT KEYWORD STUFF. At most, you should only work in one, maaaaybe two keyword variants.

Reasons for running a test like this one could be that your keyword has a synonym worth mentioning, or you might want to see if you can get more long-tail keywords by adding in a related term, or you might be aiming to see if Google will rank your page higher on the primary keyword by adding a variant to the mix. Just be sure to test this approach with readability for the user in mind, and don’t over-optimize.

Example:

6. Use numbers.

Adding a number to your page title has been proven by SEOs and content marketers alike to draw people’s attention and induce higher click-through-rates.

Example:

7. Add a phone number (if your business relies on calls).

For businesses that rely on phone calls, adding a phone number to title tags has been a highly-effective way to achieve more direct calls from your website. The downside to this is that some users might not click through to your website by calling your business directly. The upside though, is of course more calls to your business.

Example:

*Pro tip: leverage a call-tracking service, like CallRail to create and track unique phone numbers across a wide array of your website’s landing pages and test title tag phone numbers in bulk.

8. Use superlatives. (best, top, easiest, worst, most, highest, etc.)

This is your opportunity to invoke your inner Donald Trump and write the best, most unbelievable title tag anyone has ever seen! Why do superlatives work so well? Because best-in-class sells. People don’t filter Amazon for products with mediocre reviews.They want the best. You can address people’s innate desire to seek out the extremes by adding superlatives.

Example:

5. Launching Your Test 🚀

Execution time!

Launching the test is extremely simple (for most websites), but this is definitely where the whole process gets even more fun.

Here’s what you’ll do:

1. 1. Publish the new, optimized title on your website’s CMS (or request this from your developer if you can’t set it live, yourself).
   2. Head over to your Google Search Console account and copy/paste the test page URL into the URL Inspection Tool.
   3. Click on “Request Indexing.”
   4. Return to your benchmarking sheet to indicate the launch date and GSC URL submission.

Houston, we have liftoff! 🚀

6. Benchmarking & Tracking Performance

Thinking back to step #3 where we established a clear and measurable hypothesis, you should have already established the criteria for which data point(s) you’re going to use to measure your test. To recap, the most common measurement KPIs are:

1. Ranking (or position) of your primary keyword.
2. Overall clicks to your target URL.
3. Average CTR for your target keyword or URL.
4. Conversion actions or custom events.

In many cases, all of these targets can rise together, but all-around growth is no guarantee, so it’s best to select one as your primary KPI for benchmarking and measurement purposes. For the sake of this article, let’s focus on the most common goal, “ranking higher for your primary keyword.”

How to Benchmark

One of the most effective ways to benchmark title tests is to maintain a “Title Test Tracking Log.” The “test tracking log” contains all of the most valuable information from past, current, and future tests. With this, you can:

• View all of your tests in a centralized location.
• Maximize your learnings for future tests.
• Saves a ton of time by front-loading the work that it takes to identify opportunities, run SERP analysis, establish hypotheses, and write new test variants.
• Have a centralized location for measuring, tracking, and learning from all of your current and past title tests.

How to Build a Title Test Tracking Log in Google Sheets

Because Google Sheets is so customizable and so widely-used, it’s still one of the best go-to platforms for most people’s title testing log.

When building the log, you should include (at a minimum) these fields:

• Page URL – Use this to delineate tests and not your titles or H1s (which are more susceptible to change).
• Primary Keyword
• Original Title
• New (Optimized) Title
• Your Test Hypothesis – Changing my title from X to Y will ____.
• A place to track & remind you to submit the page to GSC
• GSC Submission Date – To be used as your test start date.
• Test end date – So that you know how long the test ran.
• Your KPI Benchmark – At the start of the test.
• Your KPI Result – After the test.
• A place to mark your conclusion (Positive, Negative, Neutral, or Insufficient)

7. Waiting for Your Results ☕ / Experiment Durations

Now that you’ve launched and benchmarked your test, take a break! You’ve earned it. 👏👏👏

How Long Should You Let Your Test Run?

The 2-Week Rule

When you launch your title test, you might [might] start to see some movements within days or even hours of launching your test, but most tests need at least two solid weeks (or longer) before you can measure them.

Even if you do see early data, Google’s algorithms require several days to learn about the change before the results can settle back into a more stable search environment.

To account for all of the above, I have a two-week rule says you never want to conclude any title test that has been indexed for less than 14 days.

Two weeks is the minimum, not the standard.

A lot of tests will need 3 weeks, 4 weeks, or sometimes even longer than 4 weeks before they reach a place of being able to demonstrate meaningful insights.

Pro tip: set reminders so that you can check back in two to three weeks, but let your tests run longer if you don’t see any results within a 2-4 week time period. 

8. Analyzing Your Results & Ending the Test

Two or more weeks have flown by and you’re ready to check your results. What’s next? How do you analyze the test?

First, reflect back to your original hypothesis and benchmarked KPI. In our case, it’s the primary keyword position.

Ideally, your test duration will line up closely with the same time frame as your benchmarked data for a (mostly) clean comparison.

Analyzing Your Results

1. Head back over to your GSC performance report.
2. Line up your before & after date ranges in the comparison tab and click “apply.”
3. Your before and after lines should line up like this:

If they don’t line up at the start and end points, your comparison dates are off, so go back and readjust the dates.

   4. Make sure to click on the “Average position” square to apply the position data.

5. Locate your primary keyword and analyze the data!

Note: It may help to export the data to excel google sheets.

6. Record your results and end date in the benchmarking spreadsheet.

Ending The Experiment

You’ve got a winner (hopefully it’s the optimized variant 🤞) and it’s time to decide where to go next.

If your newly-optimized title was a success

Oftentimes, people like to stick with the winning variant for a bit longer after the test has ended, but you can test again if you wish. My recommendation is to let it ride for at least another 4-8 weeks before testing a new variant.

If your test returns negative results

Negative results are extremely common, and they still provide a ton of value to learn new insights for future testing.

A negative result usually indicates that something about your optimized title just didn’t resonate with users, or with Google, or both. When this happens, most people will revert the page title back to the original and re-index the page so that you can bounce right back to the results that your page was generating before the test.

What if your test results are neutral?

A neutral test is a very common outcome. In some cases, you can double the time duration by letting the test run longer to see if you can get more data (or to give the algorithms more time to shift).

In other cases, a neutral test just means that both page titles are yielding similar levels of performance, so you can choose to keep either one of the two test variants, or you can run your test again.

Conclusion

If you’ve read through to this point, give yourself a warm congratulations. You’re now fully up-to-speed with the basic process of SEO title testing.

SEO testing takes time and patience, but when best practices are followed, the positive growth effects are a proven way to grow over the long run.

Most importantly, remember to follow the best-practices in this guide for benchmarking and monitoring your tests, so that you don’t accidentally create a scenario that leaves a negative result in play for too long.

You can level-up your title testing even more by checking out the full version at this link SEO Title Testing: Everything You Actually Need to Know. In it, you can learn about:

• Advanced Title Testing Strategies
• Group Testing
• Split Testing
• Bulk Testing
• Optimizing for CTR
• The Future of Title Testing: AI, Algorithm Changes, & More
• What to Do When Google Rewrites Your Page Title
• Myth-busting Common Misconceptions About Title Tags