Are you pouring your all into blog posts only to get few visits, shares, or comments? Even when blog posts are well crafted, they may go unread if your headlines aren’t catching your audience’s eye. But speculating about which titles might potentially perform well won’t provide you with empirical results.
With the Title Experiments Free WordPress plugin, you can test headline variations to discover which one gets the most clicks. In this way, the plugin helps you generate interesting titles that are tailored to your audience. Read on to learn more about the Title Experiments Free WordPress Plugin and how to use it to draw more visitors to your website!
Introducing the Title Experiments Free Plugin
Have you ever written a blog post and then narrowed down your headline choices to two or three? What do you do next? Without knowing exactly how your readers will respond to any of your selections, you’ll likely guess which title you think will be well received, then choose that as your blog post title.
But what if you’re wrong? Instead of randomly choosing one headline over another, Title Experiments Free is programmed to run tests on all of your choices to determine which one will perform the best in terms of clicks. Nifty, huh? It’s easy to setup as well:
As above, we recommend that you:
- Opt for search engines to find your best performing title
- Ditto for blog post feeds
- Ignore logged in users for more accurate experiment results
That’s about it for your basic setup. Once you’re done, you can head over to a new or existing blog post or page and begin experimenting with headline variations.
How to Split Test Blog Post Headlines with the Title Experiments Plugin
If you click on All Posts or All Pages from your WordPress navigation panel, you’ll notice an added column:
This number tells us that there are three titles being tested for the headline experiment above. If you navigate to Posts > Add New, you’ll notice that a new link appears below your headline field. Below Enter Title Here you’ll have the option to Add New Title. This is how you’ll experiment with various headlines. Statistics provided for each title include:
- A bar chart for the week
- Number of views
- Number of impressions
- Conversion rate
The bar chart gives you a quick visual overview of how each title is performing throughout the week. The exact number of views pop up when you hover over each bar. Views indicate the number of times each title was displayed for a specific page or blog post. Impressions include the number of times a title has been displayed in search results, a sidebar widget, blog post archives – anywhere your posts are listed within your website. Percentages tell you the likelihood of a title being shown next. Return visitors will always see the same title.
Titles are displayed to your audience based on performance. If a title underperforms, it won’t be shown to your readers as often. Conversely, ones that perform well will be shown to more people.
But if you want to remove a headline, simply click the x to the far right. If you don’t want to eliminate a title altogether, click on the flask to the far left to disable a title; it will change from green to gray. Once you’ve typed in all of your titles, you’ll see something similar to the screenshot below:
In this case, three titles were tested for a new WordPress blog. (You can add as many as you need to test.) Thus far in this experiment, the second tested title has had one view and five impressions. The other two titles have had impressions, but no views. This means that no one has yet clicked through to this blog post after reading either of those titles.
Ready to Test More? Check Out Title Experiments Pro!
For even more experimentation, check out the Pro add-on for the plugin. Title Experiments Free removes the guesswork out of title selection and provides you with much needed basic empirical information. But for a more in-depth understanding of audience patterns, and some additional features, you’ll want to try to pro version. Here’s why:
- Featured Images. Assign a unique featured image to each title you’re testing. Using this powerful feature, you can glean which image and title combinations are more likely to draw in your readers.
- Detailed Stats. You’ll still see the number of views, impressions, and the conversion rates, but the pro version gets more specific. You can select a page or post, then view stats for a specific day, month, or see what’s been going on throughout the entire experiment. This information is displayed using various chart and graph layouts.
- Freeze Experiments. You may not want to test titles for the duration of your blog post’s life on your website. If not, you can schedule the timeframe within which to stop your title experiment. Freeze options include: never, one day, over the course of weeks, months, or a year.
- Priority Support. If you have questions about your title experiments, the pro version positions you to receive priority support. What’s really convenient is that you can open a support ticket directly from your dashboard. Additionally, by clicking the tick mark beneath your support inquiry, you can opt to include details about which WordPress version you’re using, which plugins are installed on your website, and information about the hosting system you use. By ticking this box, you’ll get the most accurate response to your question.
- Low Yearly Fee. The pro license costs just $29.99 for a full year. It applies to any WordPress website you manage, and you’ll receive unlimited updates.
Using Title Experiments Free, you can create valuable content without feeling as though it’s a waste of time. Conducting A/B tests takes the guesswork out of determining how to cater blog post titles to audience needs and interests. And not only can you test out various headings, but with the pro version, you can experiment with feature images as well.
What process do you use to title your blog posts? Have you ever used this plugin or do you know of one that split tests blog post headlines just as well? Let us know in the comments section below!