Catchy Titles Have Higher Click Through Rates

By Jeffrey L. Smith

Click Me, Pick Me!
Having a well positioned website in search engines is one thing, actually being clicked another.
Sometimes it is the smallest thing can differentiate your pages when people are skimming through search results and "get the click" despite the position on the page. You should clearly identify your websites' value proposition and unique benefit to the viewer (within 3 seconds from eye contact) in order to maximize reader response an encourage an intuitive click trigger in the viewer as a result of heightened curiosity.

Your title tag is your headline, use it wisely and you can achieve higher click through rates and conversion on your pages. With just a bit of thoughtful planning, you can get the click regardless of positioning on the page if you can identify the impulse of the searcher and facilitate it with your message. Establishing and keeping the interest of the visitor is the key. The more engaging your content, the higher the response.

Think of it like this, if someone took the time to actually write a thoughtful, concise and informative title, the intuitive assumption is, the content residing on that page is truly unique and above par. Write a great hook (like a catchy headline) to trigger reader response and your pages can virtually get flooded with traffic or links. Likewise, if your content is well written, informative and engaging then you can anticipate increases in sales and conversion. The bottom line is, you get one shot (for that search), don’t blow it.

Your title should say it all.
Let’s talk about the title tag, although the first instinct is to try to fit all possible variations of your keywords with plural form and acronyms as well, another strategy suggests that your title should be a snapshot of what to expect when the reader engages your page. This lessens the feeling of getting baited or duped into a page, when the content is wishy washy. Sure, people are trigger happy on the mouse button, but even more agile in clicking the back button.

In looking at the grand scheme of things for your SEO, Top 10 Positions are great, but sometimes you have to realize that people type in the strangest queries in search engines, and believe it or not, even in Google they don’t always find what they’re looking for on the first page. Contrary to popular belief, people actually drill deeper into search engines looking for more meaningful content, and titles play a major role in this phenomenon.

Call it curiosity, boredom, or whatever you like, but by using this as part of your SEO strategy, you can blanket the top 10, top 20 and top 30 results with variations on a theme to increase your online exposure.

Blogs, for example, have a tendency to rise easily in search engines, if your site has any authority, combined with link building, you could easily research a term using a keyword discovery tool, write a blog about it (using a compelling yet keyword rich title) publish and socially bookmark it to preserve it’s longevity. In addition you could employ article marketing to hit the search engines from another angle, or add a new page to your website (with strong internal links) as the Trifecta to extend your coverage of the top 30 even further.

If you truly analyze your stats and see just how much traffic arrives from the long tail or unintentional optimization of keywords that exist on your pages, then this positioning tactic is a worthwhile pursuit. If you are receiving 85% of your traffic for instance, from long tail searches, then the natural solution would be a healthy combination of creative copy writing for the titles and introductions (since they are what show up in the title and description area in search engines). Top 10 is great, but top 20 can be equally as lucrative to target your optimization.

Jeffrey L. Smith is an seasoned search engine optimization strategist and founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Web Design Company in Chicago.

Since 1995, Jeffrey is constantly developing new and exciting internet marketing solutions for businesses and brings fresh optimization methods and strategies for companies seeking long-tail organic search engine optimization.