Scaled across thousands of pages on an enterprise site, that small change equals millions of visits.

The difference between position 1 and 2 (or even 6 and 3) can be attributed to user engagement metrics like CTR. The fastest way to manipulate CTR is through changes in page titles and meta descriptions.

Changing your titles and metas is easy — it's SEO 101. However, tracking these changes across thousands of pages is a real challenge. That's why we built a Google Sheets-based reporting system that does all the heavy lifting for you.

The file is built to evaluate:

Use Cases for The Report

This report is best used to measure mass amounts of changes in bulk on large, enterprise websites. In particular, websites with a large number of pages that you can group together.

For example:

It operates by pulling in data from Google Search Console to measure the impact of rankings and SERP CTR over periods of time.

In order to get the most out of this report, you'll need to use proper testing techniques by setting a hypothesis, control, and test.

Example 1 — Ecommerce Site

Let's imagine we're working with a health/supplement brand like GNC.

Example 2 — National Franchise

Let's imagine we're working with a national gym like 24 Hour Fitness.

Again, this works best on larger websites where you can dynamically make mass changes to templates (page titles and metas) to measure the impact on a large scale. While you can use this on any site, the data will likely be inconsistent due to the lack of volume.

Running the Report

We put together a Google Sheets file that does all the legwork for you. The instructions below will run you through tab by tab how to build the report. The five tabs are:

On-Page Variation Tab

We recommend grouping the pages you want to test by page-type (product pages, location pages, etc.) before starting to run the report. This way you'll obtain more consistent results.

For the purpose of this demonstration, we'll be testing the location pages of a national franchise.

Pulling Current Titles and Metadata

By doing this, the On-page strategy tab will be populated with the corresponding target URLs, title tags, and meta descriptions. Make sure all your columns are being filled with data by expanding the formula down.

Developing Nomenclature Strategies (The Hypothesis)

Now we're ready to define the "Nomenclature Strategies" — the variances we'll use to test new titles and metas.

We came up with 3 different Nomenclatures to test page titles:

Each of these would be tacked on to the beginning of the page's existing title.

Strategy 1: 20 - 100+

Fill out columns B, D, and F with your nomenclature strategies, new titles, and new meta descriptions accordingly.

Defining Control vs. Test Groups

After you get all your metadata written, it's time to set up your control groups. We created 2 categories to easily manage this distinction:

Evaluate how many pages you have per "nomenclature strategy" and divide each group in two. Assign "Control" to 50% of the pages and "Test" to the other 50%.

Example:

In other words, you'll only be changing titles and meta descriptions on half of your pages. The rest will remain as is.

Implementation Review Tab (Optional)

Since clients' in-house SEO teams or developers are usually the ones updating pages, it's always best practice to verify that all your recommendations were properly implemented.

To make this easier, we created a sheet called "Implementation Review" which, based on custom-built formulas, will do this verification for you.

Note: If you are 100% sure all changes have been implemented on test pages, you can skip this step and hide this tab. If not, follow these steps:

This new data will populate the Implementation Review tab automatically. The formulas on the "Title implemented on site?" columns will verify if changes were implemented by comparing current vs. recommended titles. These columns will display:

Results Data Tab

Once you verify that all the metadata recommendations were successfully implemented, you can start running the actual report by analyzing the performance breakdown of the pages that were changed.

We recommend waiting until you have a full 3 months since making the changes before running this report.

Identifying Date Windows for Analysis

The identification of your date periods for analysis will depend on your business sales activity: is it seasonal, cyclical, or neutral?

Year-over-year (Y/Y) reporting: If the changes were implemented on July 1st, set your results window (period after the changes were made) to be from July 15th to September 15th 2019. Then, your comparable window (time before changes were made) should be the same dates from the prior year: July 15th – September 15th 2018.

Period over period / before vs. after: If you're working with a neutral client (sales do not depend on seasons or specific sale cycles), you can simply compare the performance of your pages on a before-and-after basis depending on when the changes were made.

For this part of the process, we use a reporting automation plugin for Google Sheets called Supermetrics. It makes your life significantly easier, though you can still download the data manually from Google Search Console and follow the same format.

Setting up GSC Data Sheets

You'll find two empty data resource sheets:

These tabs follow the same process of creation — the only variation is the date window selection. Make sure all Supermetrics settings are set as follows:

Once you fill out both data resource sheets, your Results tab should be automatically populated. The % Change columns (H and K) have a custom-built formula that compares 1st and 2nd period results on CTR and Average Position per page. The color scale on each column represents the positive (green) or negative (red) performance of a page.

Results Analysis: Pivot Tables and Charts

Once your Results Data sheet is complete, you can start visualizing your strategy performance. We've built two Pivot Tables and Charts default setups that look at the performance of each of your Nomenclature Strategies:

Making Decisions

A large majority of page rankings may decrease as a result of your tests — this is not a bad thing.

When done in a controlled environment, it's easy to revert the changes. More importantly, it reinforces the importance of testing. If you want to grow, you have to be willing to take risks and make changes.

Testing isn't about confirming what you already believe. It's about discovering what's actually true — even when it surprises you.

The brands with the best-performing title tags aren't the ones who guessed right. They're the ones who tested systematically and kept what worked.