As far as I know the Title Tag is one of the most important components for SEO and I would guess you would lose that ranking if you changed it.

(Just my opinion.)

Keep your main phrase in it and where it was at and say not at the very end. Keep an out out and when the crawlers come around and re-read your page you will see it there in your title.

If you disappear of out site don't panic right away! Sometimes when you play around to test things you will vanish but keep an eye open and you can bounce back into place maybe even a little better if your not in number one yet.

If after some time your still not back then work on placing some more natural backlinks to your site and then create some backlinks to those backlinks say down 3 deep. Do it slow and naturally and make sure to be using Google analytics and Webmaster tools...

Is it just ranking or is it ranking and getting traffic from that ranking? If it's the latter, I wouldn't change it.

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It will affect. but only after the next index linking by Google. As well you can update your meta data and content on your page and after index linking you can see the result

Nobody knows for sure exactly what will happen.

My 2 cents: if you're making money or getting traffic or being successful what ever it is you're doing from that page (or for that matter what ever Internet asset it would be), don't change anything.

If it doesn't matter, change the title and see what happens.

Changing your title can do one of three things:

1) Hurt, as in not ranking for intended searches.
(You rank really well for student loans, but change the title to stupid loans.)

2) Help, as better ranking for searches of what it should be.
(Your title is on stupid loans, but you want student loans and that's spot on.)

3) Nothing.
(Your site was not ranking, so what the heck?)
Or
(Your site was #5 for student loans in the fall and you changed in to student loans in October. No movement)

So everybody that answered blindly, "yes," "no," or "maybe," YOU ROCK!

Paul

Yeah you will loose your ranking if you change your post title now. Titles are really effects seo rankings, if you use title with full of keywords then you will rank high but then if you change this title then you will loose these keywords.
Basically yes it will harm your seo ranking if you change your title.

You said that it's already doing great. Why bother changing it? If I were you I wouldn't change a thing. Maybe it's just in your mind that the tittle is a bit odd.

Keep the keyword intact and do a test. Title is one of the most important factors when it comes to on-page seo

cheers

I wouldn't advice changing your title. Besides, you have said that it ranks pretty well. Changing your title will really affect your SEO ranking, so i think it would be better if you keep it that way.

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Yes, your site ranking will also change because Google read Meta Title.

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You mentioned that the post is ranking pretty well, then why would you want to change the title?

If it won't change your URL, it won't be such a big problem, unless the change is only a few characters or 1-2 words max. But if you rewrite it fully like:

- How to do SEO

with

- Another way to build backlinks.

This is a significant change and it could result in a ranking drop (not 100% sure, but if someone had tried this, I am interested what's the final result)

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Make sure your important keyword are not changed. But still their will be a ups and downs. Rest leave it in Google.

The title tag are important one you told it is already going very well in ranking position if you change this it will affect your ranking position of your page so you change minor things only and see what the result is based on that you make a change.

I think this is one issue. Google finds a new title, so it "thinks": -hey something new has happened to this page, let's see what. Then when it enters the page it finds nothing new, so you've changed title to rank better. SERP manipulation attempt --> down in rankings. (at least is what I'll think)

adding that text to the title didn’t effect ranking at all.

There are 2 ways of changing the title.

a) Leaving the title in wordpress as it is and just change the seo title. I wouldn't like this if i were google cause it shows you know something about playing with the algorithms. I wouldn't like that.

b) Change both the wordpress title and seo title (default setting).

Change the title if it's to help google AND the reader at the same time.

So instead of "Yellow Bananas Taste Delicicious With Honey" you can change it to "5 Fantastic Combos That Make Yellow Bananas Taste Delicious" - well this example sucks but you get the idea, you keep the keyword (yellow bananas taste delicious) and also use some clickbait in there.

Plus, make sure the article is truly talking about that FIVE combos, don't just change the title and leave the context irrelevant, you'll get some hate from your readers = hate from google too.

You have a 50% chance of finding out what page 87 of Google SERPs looks like.