Revert audit-intent title bet; link /tbc-audit site-wide - #10
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Revert audit-intent title bet; link /tbc-audit site-wide#10alexandermayes wants to merge 1 commit into
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PR #9 retargeted the homepage title at `tbc audit` on the premise that it was our largest genuine-tool-intent query. Query-level GSC data says otherwise: it's navigational for the competitor tbc-audit.com. - `tbc audit`: 3,449 impressions, position 4.7, 0.58% CTR — roughly 10x below what position 4-5 should yield. - Qualified variants convert 5-20x better: `wow tbc audit` 2.56%, `tbc audits` 4.55%, `wow tbc log audit` 8.70%, `raid audit tbc` 12.50%. - Geography is USA/DEU/CAN/AUS (normal WoW distribution), so the bare term isn't off-topic traffic — it's WoW players who want the other tool. Same shape as the `wow tbc logs` cluster already documented in e18cc04: page-one rankings on somebody else's brand name. Two changes: - layout.tsx: restore "Free WoW Classic & TBC Log Analyzer — ParseForge". Reclaims the title length that "Classic" needs (`wow classic log analyzer` converts at 33%) and stops the homepage competing with /tbc-audit for the audit queries that page is built to serve. Keywords and description are left alone — the description's paste-a-URL framing stands on its own, and meta keywords are inert. - Navbar.tsx: site-wide "TBC Audit" link. GSC URL inspection reported sitemap.xml as the only referring URL for /tbc-audit; the single homepage body link (page.tsx:92, fourth below-fold section) was never picked up, and the page hasn't been re-crawled since it shipped. /tbc-audit keeps its existing title, which already targets the qualified terms rather than the bare competitor-brand query. Verified: tsc --noEmit clean, eslint clean. Ranking effects unverified by nature — needs a deploy plus a few weeks of GSC data. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YZK7SW7xHvHGidscPuHDwW
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Why
PR #9 retargeted the homepage title at
tbc audit, on the premise (recorded in thelayout.tsxcomment) that it was our largest non-navigational query. Query-level GSC data says the opposite: it's navigational for a competitor, tbc-audit.com — "TBC Audit — DPS Performance Review" — which owns the top of that SERP.The CTR-vs-position gap is the tell:
tbc auditwow tbc audittbc auditswow tbc log auditraid audit tbcPosition 4.7 should yield 6–8%. The bare term returns 0.58% — ~10x under — while every qualified variant converts 5–20x better. I checked whether the bare term was off-topic traffic (TBC is also a bank, a tire company, an accounting abbreviation); it isn't. Geography is USA/DEU/CAN/AUS, standard WoW distribution. These are WoW players who want the other tool.
Same shape as the
wow tbc logscluster already documented ine18cc04: page-one rankings on somebody else's brand name.Separately,
/tbc-auditwasn't reachable. GSC URL inspection reportssitemap.xmlas the only referring URL Google knows for it. The single homepage body link (app/page.tsx:92, fourth below-fold section) was never picked up, and the page hasn't been re-crawled since it shipped on 2026-07-31. So Google kept serving/for the audit queries the dedicated page was built to serve.What changed
app/layout.tsx— root title back toFree WoW Classic & TBC Log Analyzer — ParseForge. Reclaims the length that "Classic" needs (wow classic log analyzerconverts at 33%) and stops the homepage competing with/tbc-audit. Description and keywords left alone: the paste-a-URL description stands on its own, and meta keywords are inert.app/components/Navbar.tsx— site-wideTBC Auditlink, so the page has a crawlable path that isn't the sitemap./tbc-auditkeeps its existing title, which already targets the qualified terms rather than the bare competitor-brand query.Expected payoff
Modest and worth stating plainly: tens of clicks/month, not hundreds. The real headroom is the
analyzercluster (tbc log analyzer#1.9 at 34% CTR,wow tbc log analyzer#1.7 at 28%) — those convert ~50x better than anything in thelogs/auditnavigational pools.Verification
npx tsc --noEmit— cleannpm run lint— clean (exit 0)Follow-up (not in this PR)
/tbc-auditin Search Console by hand — the API can't submit it.Navbar.tsx:91carries a site-wide dofollow link toclassic.warcraftlogs.com. Useful to users, but it's every-page authority flowing to the site that outranks us on the navigational cluster.rel="nofollow"is a one-line change if wanted — separate decision, small effect.🤖 Generated with Claude Code
https://claude.ai/code/session_01YZK7SW7xHvHGidscPuHDwW