Title Split Testing for WordPress

You need to have a WordPress site running version 3.3 or later. It might work on older versions, but you'll have to test that and tell us. You also need a website with a good amount of traffic because if you only have a handful of visitors a day then you won't have enough data to make good decisions regarding which titles are best.

You set up multiple competing titles for a page or post. Then when someone visits your website, it randomly shows different titles to different visitors and records the percentage of people that click on each title. When enough people have visited your website, you can compare the data to see which title had the highest percentage of people clicking through to read the full post/page. You can then choose the winning title and the plugin will display that title to all visitors in future. If you want to repeat a test, you can simply click the Reset Data button inside the post/page editor and start the testing all over again.

You can test choose how many title variations you want to eb able to test in the plugin settings. We recommend 2 or 3 different titles but you can test more if you like.

Yes you can, but in order that the data is accurate you should click the Reset Data button to start the test again.

No. The post URL does not change when you test different titles, or when you select your final title. This is because you may have links pointing to that page/post and you may not want to change the URL for SEO reasons. If you want to change the post/page URL, you can do so manually just like normal in WordPress.

No, the plugin displays different titles to different visitors, but each visitor will always see the same set of titles, so they will not be aware that you are split testing. Only after you have completed testing and chosen your winning title can readers see that the title changed. This will only happen if they previously saw a title that was NOT selected and they refresh their browser.

No. The plugin only displays alternative titles to real website visitors using common web browsers. Google only sees the main title of your post/page and is not affected by the spit testing process until you choose the winning title following your test. When you do this, Google will just see this as if you updated the title manually and will index the new title.

The plugin measures the number of "Views" based on the number of times a link to the target page is displayed on pages viewed by your visitors. Sometimes there can be multiple links to a post or page on the same page (such as footer and sidebar links), aswell as links that do not include the actual post title such as "Read More" links. All of these links are counted as "Views". We have found that for the majority of websites this does not have any siginifcant effect on determining the winning headline.

No. The plugin is not able to update links unless they are dynamically generated by the post/page title. We ask that you use your judgement to decide whether your theme will allow accurate split testing.

Yes, the plugin uses cookies to remember which title it has shown to which visitor, thereby ensuring that each user always sees the same title when they refresh the page. Otherwise it could get really confusing. You will however have to make a judgement about how this affects your compliance with the EU Cookie Law.