Optimising page titles: How to write catchy, SEO-friendly titles

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Why the page title carries more weight than an average-quality backlink

A well-placed backlink can transfer authority and trust, but the title remains the most visible element and the one the user can act on most immediately. On Google, it takes up more than 80 % of the clickable space of the organic result. On social networks, it determines the likelihood of the click even before the image or the meta description has had time to load. In other words, a backlink elevates; a title triggers. At a time when the search engine is placing growing importance on behavioural signals (click-through rate, dwell time, pogo-sticking), neglecting your title is equivalent to wasting link juice.

During Google’s March 2024 Core Update, several French news sites saw their visibility drop despite an increase in their link profile. The post-mortem analysis revealed that their titles, crafted purely for editorial impact, did not take into account the main keyword or the explicit search intent ("buy", "compare", "review"). Simply by correcting the structure of their titles, these sites regained 30 % of their traffic in three weeks without any additional links.

Anatomy of an enticing title: between narrative art and semantic architecture

1. Emotional trigger

Neuroscience applied to marketing has shown that emotions come before rationality in decision-making. A title like "You’ll never use your microwave again after reading this" activates the amygdala (fear, curiosity). Conversely, "7 Soft Cookie Recipes to Delight Your Rainy Sundays" engages the reward circuit (positive anticipation, nostalgia). Using action verbs ("discover", "transform") or intensifiers ("irresistible", "unmissable") helps inject this emotional vector, while staying within anti-clickbait guidelines if the content delivers on its promises.

2. Clarity and explicit promise

A good title follows the law of instant readability: in less than 2.7 seconds, the reader must understand the main benefit. Dropbox doubled its B2B sign-up rate by switching from an obscure title "Secure File Synchronization & Sharing" to "Share your files, wherever you are, without compromising on security". Same keyword ("file", "secure"), but an explicit promise ("wherever you are") and a functional benefit ("without compromising") clearly stated.

3. Natural insertion of the main keyword

Google still gives slight weight to placing the keyword at the beginning of the title, as confirmed by Sistrix studies (average CTR +15 % when it appears within the first 30 characters). However, forced integration harms readability: "Cheap car insurance – Compare 50 quotes | BrandName" performs better than "BrandName | Compare 50 quotes for cheap car insurance". The first model puts the benefit ("cheap"), the action ("compare") and the quantity ("50 quotes") before the branding.

Keyword research: the hub & spoke tactic applied to titles

Traditionally, keyword research aims to produce content clusters. In the hub & spoke (hub and spokes) logic, the hub is a pillar page and the spokes are its child pages. When you apply this strategy to titles, you create a coherent semantic network. For example, for a hub on "influencer marketing", the spokes could be:

• "Influencer marketing: 10 indicators to measure your ROI
• "Micro-influencers: why their engagement rate is exploding
• "B2B: how to choose an influencer marketing agency

Each title reuses the keyword influence but targets a secondary keyword (ROI, micro-influencers, B2B). Users and crawlers alike understand the depth of the topic, which encourages automatic sitelinks and the Topic Authority position introduced by Google in 2023 in response to the rise of generative AI.

Decipher search intent to steer the tone of the title

A single keyword can carry four different intents: informational, navigational, commercial, transactional. Let’s take “Excel training. Statistically, 42% of associated queries are informational (“free Excel tutorial), 33% transactional (“Excel CPF training), 18% navigational (“OpenClassrooms Excel) and 7% ambiguous. A title intended to capture transactional intent should include an action verb and a conversion modifier: “CPF-eligible Excel training – Become operational in 10 hours. For the same query but in an informational phase, we will favour social proof: “Step-by-step Excel tutorial: 200,000 learners already trained.

Optimal length: the myth of 60 characters and the reality of the dynamic SERP

The famous 60-character (512-pixel) ceiling comes from Google’s old guidelines, but the modern SERP is responsive. Recent tests show that a 65 to 70-character title can display without truncation on desktop, while 50 characters remains the comfort zone for mobile. Rather than aiming for a fixed length, adopt the Descending Priority method: put the essential message and the keyword at the beginning of the title, and reserve optional elements (quantity, branding) for the end. That way, if the title is truncated, the critical information remains visible.

When HubSpot shortened its automatically generated titles from 78 to 58 characters, overall CTR increased by 9%. But the most striking impact was observed on mobile: +18%. Desktop pages, meanwhile, recorded a slight decline (-2%), offset by the mobile gain. Conclusion: prioritise the majority audience segment, then adjust via an A/B test.

Proven copywriting techniques to boost CTR

The law of specificity

An odd number (“7 tips”, “11 strategies”) is perceived as more credible than an even number, a phenomenon explained by the cognitive bias of processing fluency. In addition, numerical precision (“+37% leads”) builds trust. Conductor’s 2022 study indicates that titles incorporating a number increase CTR by 36% compared with purely verbal titles.

The technique of reasoned incredulity

“This freelancer bills €20,000 a month thanks to Notion” creates internal tension: scepticism vs curiosity. The user clicks to check the truthfulness. This mechanism can, however, generate a high bounce rate if the content does not provide social proof (screenshots, testimonials). To be used ethically.

Temporal projection

Including a time horizon (“in 30 minutes”, “before 2025”) answers the reader’s implicit question: “How much time do I need to invest?”. Shopify saw its 30-Minute Marketing Plans articles outperform those without specific timing, with average time on page 22% higher.

Use internal search data to shape your titles

Most CMSs have an internal search module. Extracting the 500 most frequent monthly queries helps you understand your users’ exact terminology. A high-tech e-commerce site discovered that 17% of its internal searches mentioned “PC gamer 144 Hz”. By integrating this term into category titles, it doubled the add-to-cart rate on those pages (12% → 24%).

A/B testing on titles: methodology, tools and pitfalls

Simple A/B testing via Google Optimize or VWO consists of creating two versions of an identical page, only the tag differs. KPI: CTR in Search Console. However, two pitfalls loom: (1) the sample must exceed 1,000 impressions per variant to reach a statistical power of 95%; (2) crawling delay can introduce an exposure bias (Google may display the old version for several days). The solution: set a single unique canonical flag and limit the test to 14 days to avoid signal dilution.