Adding the current year to the title helps increase organic traffic - case study

Crissy

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The SearchPilot A / B testing platform team shared the results of a case study designed to find out how adding the current month and year to title tags affects their performance.

A split test was carried out in January 2020 on the website of one of the company's clients. The phrase "in January 2020" has been added to the title tags.

This site operated in an industry where January was the peak month and the freshness of the content was the main signal for users.

The results were positive: the option with the addition of the current month and year in the title outperformed the control group by 5%.

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Subsequent tests conducted in other months showed that regardless of the time of year, adding freshness cues like the current month and year to the title tag has a positive effect on organic traffic.

SearchPilot also tested various options for replacing the month and year with price, keywords, etc., but the results were negative.

Thus, if the relevance of information is important for site users (for example, if it is a real estate site, vacancies or coupons), then adding freshness signals such as the date in the title or description can help the company stand out from competitors and attract the attention of users.

This is especially true at certain times of the year. For example, at the beginning of a new year, this information allows you to show that the information on the site was published recently.