Should title contain the term Top 10?
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One of my clients' run a hyperlocal marketplace (have different pages for each city) to hire music teachers. Should the title be "Hire Violin Teachers, Tutors from Boston"? or "Top 10 Violin Teachers of Boston".
I prefer former title as it has 2 keywords - "violin teachers", "violin tutors" than latter. But my client argues that "Top 10" has a strong affinity to attract users that would increase CTR.
Am I right? or Is he right? and Why?
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Look at the keyword you are trying to rank for. Perform several searches and see what currently ranks in the SERPs
Two things to look at
- Are you going to look the same or different from everyone else?
If everyone who is ranking right now uses the title "Top 10 Violin Teachers of Boston" then go with something like "Hire Violin Teachers, Tutors from Boston". Likewise, if everyone else uses "Hire Violin Teachers, Tutors from Boston", then go with something like "Top 10 Violin Teachers of Boston" You get the idea. If you want to get clicks, you need to stand out from the rest a bit.
- What is the user really looking for? What is the searcher intent?
Google is big on searcher intent. Forget what you and the owners think. What is the problem that potential students are trying to solve? Have your client go ask a bunch of his students / parents of students. Are they looking for "the best"? Are they looking for "the cheapest"? Are they looking for "the most experienced"? Are they looking for "most experienced with teenagers" etc. Use that with the KW volume to drive your decision.
Here is an example.
Let's say the keywords are "violin teachers Boston". It has good search volume and goal completion rates.
You have the owner talk to clients and find they really looking for Violin instructors with the most experience.
You then see that all the pages in the serp use the listicle approach - top 10 violin teachers in Boston, the best 5 instructors for violins in Boston" etc The results seem to indicate that people are looking for the best/experienced violin teachers in Boston, but the pages that are ranking are trying to fulfill this intent by using a list approach.
Brainstorm with ideas around the keywords "experienced violin teachers in Boston", that don't include lists and try that out. You should now have the basic keywords covered for volume/conversion/ranking purposes, you have searcher intent covered, and you have something that can help you stand out a bit on page 1 among all the other titles. Make sense?
Cheers!
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Would go with his suggestion, the top 10 keywords will make sure the title is catchier and the keywords for SEO are still in the title with that as well. You could test by looking at your data in Google Search Console if this is working for you or not.
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That's a good question. I'm not surprised that your client really loves the good ol' "listicle" approach, a la Buzzfeed & the like. The listicle was ~the~ thing to do in 2015/2016, it seems! I almost think that "Violin Teachers, Tutors" seems _kind of, slightly _keyword stuffy. I'd encourage you to instead place one of those two words (teacher vs tutor) in the meta description to make the title tighter & cleaner if you go with your preferred title.
I say this because I try to remember to cater to my searcher/user first & foremost with compelling titles & descriptions, while still giving nods to Google with proper practices. However... When in doubt, consider A/B Testing with your different locations to see which performs best! Good luck!
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