The Power of Title Tag & H1 Word Choice: A Mini SEO Case Study
By Ethan Lazuk
Last updated:
I often tell clients that SEO takes time, yet some website optimizations can yield faster results than others.
One of the lowest-hanging fruit opportunities I find in SEO audits tends to be optimizing title tags.
About this case study:
In this mini case study, I’ll show a couple of examples from two different types of webpages where changing their already optimized title tags and H1 headings correlated with increased organic traffic from Google Search, either through better keyword rankings or higher CTR for related queries.
Disclaimer:
Keep in mind, these results aren’t meant to imply this level of optimization will result in similar results for all pages all of the time.
These examples merely show how making the right decisions when optimizing title tags or on-page headings can lead to dramatic improvements of performance for certain metrics, like clicks, average position, or clickthrough rates.
Case study summaries:
In the first mini case study, there was a blog article that was receiving an average of 6 clicks per month from Google Search, and ranking outside the top 10 positions for its most relevant keywords.
That article jumped into the top 5 positions for those same keywords and started receiving around 450 clicks per month, most likely as the result of one simple optimization to the page’s title tag and H1 heading.
The second mini case study is a similar case. This was a category page that was ranking in the top 5 positions for most of its most relevant queries already, however, it was only receiving around 8 clicks per day because the CTR for these queries was around 2% or less on average.
By adding a single word to the title tag and H1 to better fit the context of the audience’s search intent, the average clicks went to 21 per day with an average CTR closer to 8% for the main queries.
Table of contents
- Title tag audit purpose and process
- Case study 1 (rankings improvement)
- Case study 2 (CTR improvement)
- Takeaways
As a final note, remember these title tag and H1 optimizations are examples of people-first SEO, where changes are made for the user’s benefit first and search engine rankings second. This is a hallmark principle of creating helpful, people-first content in 2024 and beyond.
Now, before we get to the case studies, let’s explore how to gather the data.
It all starts with a title tag audit
One of the steps I take when doing an SEO audit of a website, whether it’s a new client or just a website I’m not familiar with, is auditing the title tags.
As an example, in July 2023, I did an example SEO audit of a non-profit organizations website, which include an evaluation of the homepage title tag as well as the title tags of other site pages.
Why are title tags important?
Title tags not only play a role in a page’s positional keyword rankings, they can also influence clickthrough rates in SERPs by appearing as title links and showing users that a page’s content aligns with their search intent.
You can preview how your page’s title tag might appear as a title link using a tool like Portent’s SERP Preview Tool or an SEO plugin like RankMath or Yoast:
Keep in mind, Google Search may not always show the title tag as the title link. It may instead show part of it, choose the H1 heading, or even use other sources, like page text, anchor text, or WebSite structured data. (You can read more about it in their documentation.)
I’ve also noticed how title links may change across device types or by query. So it’s important to check the SERPs manually to see how your title link appears:
If Google rewrites your title tag as the title link, this isn’t necessarily a problem. It just means the title tag you provided wasn’t the best match for the user’s search intent. Bear in mind, Google Search generates title links using an automated process.
While the recommended length for title tags tends to be around 50 to 70 characters, this is just a guideline. Google has no set rules for title tag length.
Some more title links are multiple lines long. Adding more keywords or entities to your title tag can also enrich its relevance to the audience’s search query.
Just make sure the most important information for the user is visible, and you’re acting within reason and not being spammy.
How I do a title tag audit
I’ve worked with plenty of SEOs who have detailed and consistent processes for accomplishing goals. I’m jealous, because I do not!
I have fundamental ways to approach an SEO task, sure, but the exact steps tend to vary depending on the size and age of the website, how much optimization work has been done up till this point, or the amount of time available for the task.
Where possible, I prefer to spend the necessary amount of time to achieve the level of quality for results that I feel comfortable with, or at least set the stage for continued work based on preliminary findings, rather than compress a task to fit a set hours deadline.
Other factors include whether the final document will be client facing or internal, whether it will be just myself or other people working from the data, and many others.
That said, here is how I typically approach a title tag audit:
1. Screaming Frog Page Titles + GSC performance report export
Typically, the first step I do for a title tag audit is crawl the website in Screaming Frog and then export the Page Titles report.
With that information, next I’ll usually export data from Google Search Console’s performance report showing page URLs with click and CTR data for the last 28 days or 3 months, depending on whether the website gets high or low amounts of organic traffic.
2. Creating a working Google Sheet using a ChatGPT Excel export
Next, I’ll combine the Screaming Frog and Google Search Console data exports into a single spreadsheet.
Depending on the size of the website in terms of its page count, I’ll either combine the exports manually in Google Sheets, with the performance report data and page titles compiled together, or import both files into ChatGPT Pro (GPT-4) and ask in the prompt to create a new Excel document that I can download and import back into Google Sheets.
Once I have a list of all the URLs with their title tags and GSC performance data, next I’ll group the URLs in Google Sheets by page type (e.g., service pages, product pages, blog articles, etc.). This helps to look for commonalities in title tag structure and prioritize updates.
Within each of those groups of page types, I’ll next create subgroups based on which pages are most important to meeting the website’s business goals or align with the core topic clusters for its audience along their buyer’s journey.
Lastly, I’ll filter all of those subgroups by which pages have the highest clicks.
By the end, I have a list of all website pages, prioritized from top to bottom in logical groupings based on their page type, topic, and importance for the website’s business goals and organic traffic.
3. Looking for title tag optimization opportunities
Now with a list of pages in order of priority, I’ll scan through the title tags column looking for outliers with obvious improvement opportunities.
I’m looking for things like pages with obviously too short or low-detail title tags, title tags that don’t fit the theme or purpose of the page, wordy title tags that push key information to the end (or don’t include it at all), or title tags that don’t sound natural or appealing for a user.
At the same time, I’ll look at the CTR for each page to see if it’s noticeably low. Since this CTR number is an average for all queries the page ranks for, it’s just a high-level indicator at this point, but low CTRs can be worth flagging for further evaluation.
The purpose of this exercise is to look for obvious title tag opportunities or pages that need further evaluation for CTR improvement, which is the next step.
4. Evaluating page-level query rankings data
Now that I have both a full list of pages to investigate plus clues for which pages to start with, I begin to evaluate each page’s individual keyword rankings in Google Search Console, including looking at the top queries by clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position.
This rankings analysis is done by filtering the GSC performance report for the exact URL and then analyzing the query report, typically over a comparative time frame like the last 28 days vs. the previous 28 days.
I’ll also look at recent data from the last reported day or two to get a more specific sense of what queries the page is ranking for currently, at which positions, and whether there’s room for improvement.
When evaluating query reports on a page level, I look for things like:
- Are the queries with the most impressions relevant to the page?
- Does the page rank at a high average position for its most relevant queries?
- Is the page getting a high CTR as a result of ranking at a high average position?
Answering “no” to any of the questions above doesn’t necessarily mean that updating the page’s title tag would solve these issues. (It may be the page’s content isn’t a good match for the search intent, or the SERP layout itself has other features and types of results that earn clicks.) But title tag improvements could help.
5. Checking the SERPs
Finally, now that I have a list of queries to investigate for a given page, the next step is to search some of those queries manually on Google Search on desktop and mobile to observe how the page’s title link is actually appearing in search results. Bear in mind, just because a page has a set title tag doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what Google will show as the title link.
If the title link isn’t appearing on Search verbatim how it’s provided, I’ll take note of that, also clarifying any differences in desktop versus mobile results or from different query to another.
I’ll also observe how the page’s title link compares against competitors’ results. Is it similar or different, and how? We want the page to stand out to our target users, but only for the right reasons, i.e., it’s the most relevant and enticing of the results.
There’s a lot of nuance when evaluating SERPs, because maybe a query returns several webpages with slightly different search intents. Ultimately, the title tag should be relevant to the page’s content.
If a user is misled, they may bounce from the page. That can send negative engagement or user interaction signals about the page’s relevance to Google’s ranking systems.
6. Forming a hypothesis
Once I’ve accumulated a good amount of data for at least the first few key pages, I’m left to make a decision about whether a title tag change is a logical next step. And if that seems to be the case, what change should we make?
Note: If I’m dealing with a small website, say less than 30 pages, I may skip some of these steps, like all the categorization and data recording, and simply filter the pages by their importance to the website’s business goals, then do all of the GSC, SERP, and competitive analysis on the fly and simply record what I think the updated title tag should be.
Whether you’re documenting every step or working on the fly, the important thing is to keep a record of what the original title tag was and the date of any changes. The new title tag may not appear on Search right away, as Googlebot needs to recrawl the page. But it will likely show within a few days, or sooner if you request a crawl manually in GSC.
Case study 1 – delayed rankings impact of changing a blog article’s title tag & H1
This blog article was written to answer a specific question about the cost of a service in Florida.
It was originally published on April 11th, 2023.
Despite the main search intent being to find an answer to a question, the title tag and H1 were both statements. The article content itself was helpful.
Title tag and H1 change
The title tag and H1 were changed roughly 2 months after the article was published on June 9th, 2023.
The changed involved taking a statement like, The Cost of Repairing XYZ in Florida | Brand, and making it a question like, What is the Cost to Repair Your XYZ in Florida? This was applied to the title tag and H1. Also, the writing of the brand in the original title tag didn’t match what most consumers recognized as the brand’s name, so we removed it.
Those were the only changes made to the page. The changes seemed to help immediately, but later the page’s rankings really improved, likely because it was seen as more relevant.
Impact of the change
Here is the before and after clicks and impressions in Google Search Console for the updated page as a whole:
In the two months before the title tag was changed, the article received 12 clicks and 3.66k impressions, while its top two keywords for clicks averaged a 3-3.7% CTR and average position between 11 and 21.
In the two months since the title tag was changed, the article received 912 clicks and 36.1k impressions, while those same two keywords (now 1 and 3 for clicks) averaged a 14.5%-15.4% CTR and average positions between 3.3 and 4.6.
However, the first and second month after the title tag update tell different stories.
In the first month, those queries had an average position of 5.2 to 7.5 with a CTR of 3.1% to 7.5%
In the second month after the title tag update, the average position for the queries went to 1.2 to 1.4 with a CTR of 22.9% to 26.5%
In other words, the title tag update was immediately felt in the rankings and CTR of the top queries by clicks, but it took about a month for the full benefit of the change to be realized.
For those who say SEO can have quick results, and for those who say SEO takes time, you’re both right in this case.
Despite being published on 4/11, the page didn’t register any impressions in organic search results until 4/26, roughly 2 weeks. It averaged around 75 impressions a day until around 6/1, when that number increased to around 150 impressions a day. Similarly, the article earned around 2 clicks per week, which increased to 6 clicks per week for the first week of June.
All of the top 10 queries by impressions for this period were relevant to the service the article discussed, however the article was specific to Florida, and these queries didn’t mention the state, only the service. Their average positions were between 60 and 77.
The top queries by clicks were lower in impressions (in the top 30-40 queries) but were more accurate still to the article’s topic as they mentioned both the service and Florida. Their average positions were between 11 and 21.
After the title tag optimization, the top 10 queries by impressions ranged from average position 72.9 down to 3.5. The two top queries by clicks were now the 7th and 11th highest pages by impressions.
In terms of recorded clicks, those two queries went from 1 click each in the 2 months before the title tag optimization to 73 and 51 clicks in the two months afterward.
However, that broke down as 8 clicks each in the first month, then 30 and 65 clicks in the second month (reported).
Case study 2 – quick CTR impact of changing a category page’s title tag & H1
This category page was about as standard as category pages come.
It had an H1, a couple sentences of paragraph text — there’s much debate about whether having content on category pages even matters for SEO in the era of Google’s machine learning systems, which depend less on-page keywords for relevance than other contextual and user signals, however, I generally believe if the content is genuinely helpful (not AI drivel) and doesn’t interfere with the user experience, it may have a place on a category page, within reason, of course — and lastly the listing of products in the category.
Meanwhile, the title tag, like the H1, contained the most common variation of the main query for the page topic (which was 3 words long).
Context of the change (and related info)
We first optimized this category page near the end of June 2023. How did we do that?
The first step was dealing with a keyword cannibalization issue.
For the record, I feel keyword cannibalization is sometimes misunderstood, and really isn’t a big problem, if you understand the nuances of targeting the same query with multiple pieces of content.
For example, here’s a site I saw ranking for the same query (albeit a fairly niche long-tail keyword) by tackling the same subject matter from two search intents:
As another example, I also created an article on my blog where I targeted a keyword I was already ranking number 1 for to better satisfy the search intent.
However, in the case of this case study’s category page, we had a duplicate content issue, where a less desirable version of the category page was appearing in search for the most relevant queries (as well as showing up as a sitelink for navigational queries) at the expense of the main category page version.
This duplicate page wasn’t a user-declared or even Google-selected canonical in Search Console or anything like that — if you’re curious about canonicalization and page duplication, I cover these in another interesting case study about a domain migration where a homepage 301 redirect wasn’t possible (eek!) — and it wasn’t the version of the page linked in the main menu or that inbound internal links (which admittedly weren’t well organized at this point) were pointing to.
Nevertheless, it was ranking and not providing the best user experience. So we deleted and 301 redirected that puppy to the main category page.
As a result, that category page began ranking for the intended queries within a few days, and appearing as a sitelink at times, and subsequently began picking up notable traffic after about two weeks.
It generally averaged around 10 clicks per day.
Title tag and H1 change
Around September 6th, we noticed the main queries for the page, in terms of clicks and impressions in Google Search Console, weren’t necessarily related to the core keyword it was optimized for, but rather to an audience variation.
Say the original title tag was like Main Product Type | Brand and the H1 was like Main Product Type, we noticed the most popular queries were actually [audience segment main product type].
So, we updated the title tag and H1 by putting Audience Segment in front of Main Product Type.
As a result, average daily traffic shot up about 4-5 times within a few days, then settled down a little bit to about 3 times the previous level, or approximately 25 clicks per day instead of 8 clicks per day.
If we isolate for just queries containing the “audience segment” modifier, we can really see the stark contrast in clicks and CTR for the page.
What’s also interesting is that average position for these terms didn’t improve a whole lot.
In other words, we weren’t experiencing a huge improvement in rankings from this change, but rather an improvement in CTR and therefore traffic, largely because the title link in the SERP gave the impression of being more relevant to that audience segment. In reality, the products were always relevant, but that just wasn’t as clear.
*Please note, these are averages across queries and not individual query-level metrics, which is how I’d prefer to analyze this. That said, in the interest of keeping data anonymized, I won’t be providing too much detail.
Key takeaways – don’t neglect existing content or be afraid to wait for results
Creating new content to satisfy the search intent of your target audience is a common practice of many SEO strategies. It often starts with identifying the audience’s paint points, mapping those to target queries based on keyword research, and then creating new content assets designed to rank for those keywords in organic search results by satisfying the audience’s search intent.
As a foundation of its content, a website should have pages to cover its core products, services, or offerings, as well as related informational content for those topics.
But as long as the foundational content is on the website already, I often like to turn my attention toward existing content optimization before creating more new content.
The key question I ask is, “Is the website’s existing content performing up to its potential?”
In other words, is the content as high quality, helpful, and appealing from a user experience perspective to its target audience as it could be, and as a result, is it ranking as high as it could be in search results for the most relevant queries, or taking advantage of existing strong rankings or visibility, as in the case of SGE or Copilot (the new Bing) or features like People also view, to maximize qualified clicks?
One of the easiest aspects of content to adjust is the wording of title tags and headings. As seen in the two examples above, making the right adjustments for title tag or H1 wording could have a sizable impact on rankings or CTR from target keywords.
Yet, while some of the results were felt immediately after making the updates, other changes took about a month (and likely a related adjustment on Google’s end to its ranking systems) for the full impact to be felt.
Again, these are two isolated examples of improved rankings or CTR metrics, and you shouldn’t expect that low effort changes to title tags or H1s alone will always yield traffic increases of that magnitude.
But if nothing else, it shows that SEO is a process, and making the right page updates to benefit the audience can have an outsized impact on performance.
“If you say the word”
I’ll add more case study examples or updates to the data in these case studies soon.
Want help with your title tags? I’m an independent SEO consultant accepting new clients!
If you have questions, comments, or would like advice, feel free to get in touch with me: @EthanLazuk on X and LinkedIn.
Until next time, enjoy the vibes:
Thanks for reading. Happy optimizing! 🙂
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