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How long do changes in title tags take to affect SEO?
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This is kind of a loaded question. I'm completely new to SEO. I think my boss signed up for Moz Pro sometime in February and started adding data to our Ecommerce site to help with rankings. Sometime before this, I changed some of the title tags on the site (trying to help with organic search and CTR). I did not do a site wide change.... just changed maybe 10-20 (just a guess). I did it with keywords in mind but did not make note of when I did it. I didn't really know better at the time, and I did not have access to Google Analytics or Moz Pro.
I was looking through the ranking data/graph for February and March. It won't let me look before February 29th (so that's why I think my boss started the Mos Pro subscription around at that time). On that day it said we ranked 12 keywords in the 1-3 spot, and then the following week (march 7) it went down to 6. I don't think or know if any major site changes were implemented, so I'm not sure why that happened and if it has anything to do with my title tag changes I did maybe a week or two before (again I am not sure when I did this unfortunately). Since then the keyword ranking numbers stayed about the same with organic traffic slowly going down (it could be because we are getting out of season for our industry though). The second week of March the site was upgraded and since then the menu has been completely changed around. Last week I did a site wide title tag change. So the minor changes I made in February are no longer in effect anyway.
I added more keywords to Moz earlier this week and the number for 1-3 spot keywords went up from 6 to 20. It also says my ranking moved up 4 keywords and down 13 keywords. Anyway, I am wondering how seriously I should take these changes and if I'm damaging the site. I am new to Moz Pro also so all the data you can access is kind of confusing/overwhelming.
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It is a loaded question as there are many other more important facets than Title tags. So wary of answering. A site audit is where to start. https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015
Other factors to consider and monitor carefully include page loading speed, and the combinations of the url and H1's. For example I have seen sites penalized for having the same url, title tag, h1 and the meta description keyword stuffed with the same keyword. All that said title tags are still important though less so but to answer we would need context with what else is happening on site.
A quick check tool is website.grader.com On your specific question of how long until Title tags may impact usually after indexing so 2-7 days. Use fetch for google if wish to make happen sooner.
Hope that assists.
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I take all aspects and changes to our sites very seriously, especially the Title tags & page content. I too adopted a Moz campaign and recently revamped our keywords to better target our product pages SEO. Analyze a Keyword is one of my favorite Moz tools. We have seen measurable improvements since that major update.
How Long to take effect? That depends on numerous variables; DA, Traffic, Links, Outside Advertising, etc... when I want faster results, I submit the updated page for indexing through Webmaster Tools.
Hope this helps
KJr
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