Your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts should not be limited to building backlinks, improving brand image, and building authority in your industry. While these are powerful and proven ways to increase your search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your website, there are other aspects of SEO that are just as important to master.

One of these aspects that is becoming increasingly important, as the internet becomes more and more watered down with content, is the optimization of your article titles.

Click Through Rate Matters

More and more, search engines are taking into account the click through rate (CTR) of your content. Putting it simply, the more your content is clicked on compared to other content of the same type, the higher it will rank. The number one way to get people to click on your articles and blog posts versus other similar content is to create a title that grabs their attention and inspires them to check it out.

Take note that search engines run A/B tests to see whether your article is being clicked on more versus another article of the same topic. Basically, they show some people your article in certain spot in the search results and then they show other people another article in the same spot. If your article is clicked more than the other article, they will move you up in the search rankings.

Oklahoma City SEO professionals know this all-too-well and have been optimizing article title tags for search ranking improvement for years. As the trends change, they change with them.

What’s Changed, Exactly?

It used to be that the one most important factor was getting the main focus keyword of the article in the title as early as possible. This doesn’t matter as much anymore, because everyone is doing this now. Search engines have gotten a lot smarter, and they know how to identify what your article is about as long as you use a good spread of different variations of the keyword you’re attempting to rank for within the content itself.

Instead, you want to create titles that jump off the page and almost force someone to click on them. At the same time, you want to be sure that the content inside of the article reflects what the title promises. Click-bait type titles tend to do more harm than good. You want long-term results, not short term spikes of low-quality traffic.

Creating interesting, dazzling, attention grabbing titles that are true to the content they support can increase your search engine rankings. If you find you’re having a hard time mastering this skill, you might want to seek out the services of an SEO pro in Oklahoma City.

Sources:

SEO Trek: The Search for Google RankBrain* [New Data], moz.com

Google uses RankBrain for every search, impacts rankings of “lots” of them, searchengineland.com