Of course, it could be a case that your page just doesn’t quite match what the reader is looking for, but if this happens repeatedly or on multiple pages, Google will quickly learn that your page does not offer value and it will stop ranking you well in the SERPs.
This also means it’s very important to be as specific as possible in your titles. I’ve already looked at one example of this above, but it goes beyond the mere content of the post.
To continue the example above, say your title and meta title is “A 5-Step How-To Guide On Driving Traffic To Your Website” but instead of providing a standard text-heavy article, you present the information in listicle form or as an infographic.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but a reader expecting a standard article would be put off by the content format and bounce away from your page to head straight back to the SERPs.
In this case, your title should make your mode of representation clear. For example, you could use “An Infographic of 5 Steps To Driving Website Traffic” or “A 5-Step Guide To Driving Website Traffic [Infographic]”.
By including the extra information, you’re giving the Internet user more to go on, and they’ll then know exactly what to expect when clicking through to your website.
You’ll notice that I’ve changed the word order of the above headings slightly to keep it shorter.
While I won’t go into full details of writing a great headline in this article, it’s worth remembering that your title should be short and sweet, especially in the context of the SERPs.
You could have a longer title on your actual website if required, but Google limits what’s visible in the search results to roughly 60 characters. To make the most of your title and ensure it doesn’t get cut off when displayed in the SERPs, you’ll want to keep it well below this character limit.