ExperimentsSchema and structured data

After a one-day overhaul led by new titles and descriptions, a restaurant site’s clicks tripled at the same average position

Photo of Nizam Ud Deen UsmanNizam Ud Deen Usman27 October 2026
2 minutes read
In short

The pages already ranked on page one but were rarely clicked: titles were cut off and descriptions were missing. After a one-day overhaul led by new snippets, clicks tripled.

What I did

A restaurant client's site ranked on page one for many searches but had a sitewide click rate of about 0.4 percent. 61 pages had no meta description and 62 titles were too long and got cut off. On 6 June 2026 I rewrote the titles and descriptions of 53 pages, starting with the most seen ones, with the town name and an order-online hook. The same day I also added Restaurant structured data, rewrote all 63 blog posts, rebuilt the locations and reviews pages, and fixed headings.
Where

A restaurant website, June to July 2026
What changed

In the next week, homepage clicks went from about 9 a week to 92 and stayed around 100. Over four weeks the homepage went from 42 to 424 clicks, and its click rate from 0.89 to 3.47 percent, at the same position of about 9 to 10. The whole site went from 167 to 487 clicks. The homepage's impressions also rose, from 4,569 to 11,925, so it was shown for more searches as well as clicked more. The data for a year earlier starts in June 2025, too late for a fair comparison.
Did it work

It worked
What you should do

If your pages rank on page one but get few clicks, check your titles and descriptions first. Titles over about 60 characters get cut off, and a missing description lets Google choose any text.
How long it took

About a day for 53 pages

A snippet is what people see in Google before they click: the title, the address and the short description.

Why it matters

A page at position 9 that nobody clicks earns nothing. A clear title with the town and what you sell, plus a description with a reason to click, can change the click rate without moving the ranking at all.

Structured data, rewritten blog posts and rebuilt pages went live the same day, so the titles get part of the credit, not all of it.

How to check your own site

  • In Search Console, find pages with good positions and a click rate under 1 percent.
  • Search for them yourself and read the title and description Google shows.

At a glance

ResultIt worked
Effort to copyAbout a day
Type of businessLocal SEO, Restaurant and food
SubjectSchema and structured data
167 to 487site clicks in four weeks
0.89% to 3.47%homepage click rate
Sameposition, about 9 to 10
Status Done
Hypothesis Rewriting truncated titles and missing descriptions will raise clicks without needing better rankings.
Started 2026-06-06
Measured by Homepage and site clicks and click rate, four weeks before vs after
What this changed in how I work

The average position did not move; the click rate did. Several fixes went live the same day, so the titles get part of the credit, not all of it.

Part of The SEO Lab, an open notebook of real SEO work, published as it happens.Recorded 27 October 2026. Filed under Experiments. Everything here comes from work I did myself. If a number looks wrong, ask me how it was measured.

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