How I write YouTube and SEO Page Titles that get more clicks

If the following two insights seem trivial – consider titles are the most important thing you can work on.

You can put a ton of extra work into your content, but if the title falls flat, people won’t even give your extra work a chance.

Insight 1 will be about YouTube titles.
Insight 2 will be about SEO page titles.

GPT 4o writes better YouTube titles than me

I’ve been doing copywriting – actively working on improving it and doing it daily – for the last 15 years…

And GPT 4o comes up with higher-performing YouTube titles than me.

For those that don’t know, I have a daily digital marketing podcast – today will be 697 consecutive days doing the podcast.

I got this comment 12 days ago: “BTW, you are blowing up on YT recently. I just checked your recent videos and the comments are increasing. Also, more views. Congrats. What happened?”

StartupSpells leaving a comment for me on YouTube - saying The Edward Show podcast is blowing up and asking what I started doing differently.

One of the major things I started doing – honestly – was letting GPT 4o write my podcast titles.

Here are some recent ones:

My workflow used to be:

  1. Come up with idea for episode.
  2. Agonize thinking of the title.
  3. Record podcast making sure to address the title.
    1. This had the added drawback of making it hard to change the title in the future if I thought of something better.
  4. Make thumbnail based on title and what I say in podcast.

My new workflow is:

  1. Come up with idea for episode.
  2. Record podcast riffing on the idea.
  3. Give transcribed podcast to GPT 4o with the exact prompt, “Here’s the transcript for today’s podcast. The podcast comes out to YouTube and Spotify/Apple Podcasts. Give me a good title for the podcast episode. Transcript:”
  4. Pick best title (usually just the first one GPT gives).
  5. Make thumbnail mostly based on title and a bit of what I say in podcast.
My editing tool, Descript, automatically transcribes my podcasts before I start editing.
My editing software - Descript - automatically transcribes my podcast. Then I copy this transcript into ChatGPT.

Saves a lot of time and gives more results.

Nobody knows this about SEO page titles

It’s crazy to say but something I’ve found is even established SEOs don’t know how to write effective SEO page titles.

This is my formula:

Target Keyword | Benefit or Searcher’s Goal | Brand Name

Examples:

  • Personal Injury Lawyer NYC | Get Compensation Now | ClaimRise Legal
  • Free Business Chat Software | Simplified Team Chat | Chatterly Pro
  • Coffee for Headache Relief | Headache-Safe Caffeine | CalmBrew

Most digital marketers: Don’t even have a target keyword.

Most SEOs: Have target keyword but don’t add an extra reason to click.

Sidenote – other SEOs will tell me my page titles are too long and will get cut off by Google. It’s true. The important distinction is that what is not cut off is the keyword and most of the benefit or searcher’s goal.

To The Web's Page Title testing tool - if the brand name gets cut off, it's okay. Just make sure the target keyword and benefit do not get cut off.

You can use this tool to test your page title length.

Why my formula gets above average rankings and results:

  • The keyword at beginning says, “This result is for you (the searcher)” – which increases clicks.
  • The added benefit or searcher’s goal distinguishes your page from others in the search results – increases clicks.
  • The brand name (when visible) slightly boosts trust – slightly increases clicks.
  • The amount of clicks your result gets relative to other search results is a very strong ranking factor.
    • You then just have to make sure you give searchers what they’re looking for right away.

Bonus

My article last week, if you didn’t see, is all about how to humanize ChatGPT for copywriting.

Wrapping

Content that doesn’t get clicked is content that doesn’t get seen.

Do these things to get more clicks to your titles, more views to your brand, and ultimately – more conversions.

Converting

BTW – if you haven’t checked it out – I have a 13.5 hour beginner-to-advanced SEO course entirely about doing SEO that gets you customers.

https://compactkeywords.com/

Not vanity clicks or impressions – but actual customers.

Here are a few of my favorite recent testimonials:

A great review for Compact Keywords, my SEO course. Angel purchased the course a month ago and using its lessons, has already made half the cost of the course. He expects to recoup the full price of the course in the next few weeks.
A great review for Compact Keywords, my SEO course. Angel continued his testimonial to say Compact Keywords will make his ad retargeting more effective and his email signups have already more than doubled - only a month after purchasing the course.
A great review for Compact Keywords, my SEO course. Angel continued his testimonial to say his week-old Compact Keywords SEO landing pages, two of them, which took very little work to create - have already brought 100 users.

👆 In Angel’s first month, the sales made from Compact Keywords SEO pages already repaid half the cost of the course. And it’s growing everything else – general traffic, ad retargeting, email signups.

A great review for Compact Keywords, my SEO course. Kirill Lazar said Compact Keywords teaches in 13 hours what it took his SEO manager to learn “in 8 years and hundreds of tests.”

My SEO course teaches in 13 hours what it took that SEO manager to learn “in 8 years and hundreds of tests.”

And in case you have had bad experiences in the past with marketing courses (which unfortunately is rampant in this industry):

A great review for Compact Keywords, my SEO course. TRVXO LLC said it's not a BS course like all the other marketing courses he has seen in the past 20 months. He's implementing the Compact Keywords SEO method in his other niches now, as well.

Compact Keywords, hope you’ll check it out.

Keep learning

Get Ed’s top-secret marketing hacks in your inbox every week 👇

Picture of Edward Sturm

Edward Sturm

Edward Sturm is an entrepreneur, SEO, writer, and video producer.

Recent articles

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Get Ed's top-secret marketing hacks in your inbox every week.

Edward Sturm's growth hacking newsletter