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front-loading the keyword in the first 40 chars of a title — small change, measurable

Tips & strategies 1,273
Jenna M

Titles get clipped in the feed much earlier than the field limit suggests, so anything past roughly the first 40 characters is invisible to a scrolling human even if the system still reads the whole thing. I rewrote 60 titles so the phrase comes first and the cute framing goes last — Small Bathroom Storage Ideas — 12 renter-friendly fixes instead of 12 renter-friendly fixes for a tiny bathroom. Saves on those went up noticeably over six weeks. I don't think it changed ranking at all, it changed what people could see.

# copywriting # ctr # titles

2 replies

Claire Dubois

The clipping point moves around by device and by surface so 40 is a rule of thumb, not a number. The principle survives that though — write it so the first half stands on its own as a complete thought.

Emma Wilson

I took this too far and ended up with sixty titles that all open with the same four words. On a results page or on my own profile it looks like a spam wall and I'm slowly undoing it. Front-load, but vary the entry so you're not publishing the same first line forever.

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