Changing Title Tag

[DrDre]

I have a website that is ranked in the top 5 for a very competitive keyword. There has been some talk within my organization recently about changing the website's title tag to attract more clicks in the results on the SERPS.
I've worked very hard over the last few years to get my site to the top, and I am worried that changing the title tag will cause the site to drop. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

[jimbeetle]

Well, the title is one of the most important factors, so if this one has worked to rank well, I would have to take a very, very long think before even thinking about changing it. If you can keep the same basic structure of the current title it might be something to think about.

If. Might. Would still need a really long think.

Another area to consider changing before the title might be the meta description. If you can craft a good description that includes the keyword phrase, then that would more likely appear -- and be more appealing -- than an SE-generated snippet, and might also invite more clicks.

[beu]

Down here in Atlanta we have a saying, "if it ain't broke don't fix it"!

When you say "the website's title tag" do you mean the TITLE element is the same on every page of the site?

I would change the description tag and see if there is an increase in clicks long before I even thought about considering thinking about changing the TITLE element.

According to W3C the TITLE element is "the most important element of a quality web page." Consider how many clicks the page will get if you change the TITLE to get more clicks and as a result the page appears on page 8 in the SERPs. Personally I don't like to change pages that are ranking well.

One alternative might be creating a new page which uses the proposed TITLE and contains more information on your target keyword term.

[kharen]

yes..it might hurt your ranking in the next update...beu is right creating a new page with desired keywords and title is the best alternative...

[SEO Hammer]

I would change it definitely. If you are on no.1 or no.2 and have spammy Title, it is obvious that you will not get any visitors and sales. I would better stay at no.3 or no.4 and have a good title which describes clearly what the user is looking for.