feat(seo): rewrite the C1 snippets to earn the click (W8)

The baseline says these pages already rank and are not clicked. 'compare
school performance' sits at position 6.1 with 0.43% CTR; 'compare schools' at
7.2 with 0.87%. The brand query 'school compare' draws 9.16% from the same
neighbourhood of the same results page, which rules out a ranking explanation
— when the snippet gives a reason to click, it gets clicked.

These SERPs are owned by the DfE's own 'Compare school performance' service.
The old title put a lowercase brand nobody searches for in the most valuable
pixels, then a near-paraphrase of that service's name. Beside the government's
own result it read as a lookalike.

Intent in the title, differentiator in the description. Titles now match what
people type, and the descriptions carry the one fact gov.uk does not publish:
how close you had to live to get a place.

/compare deliberately takes the tool phrasing rather than the homepage's, so
the two pages stop competing for one phrase. The root layout's default and
Open Graph copy were saying something different again; they now agree.

No hard school counts in any of it. The corpus moves with every data refresh
and this repo has already shipped one copy bug of that kind.

Tests guard the mechanics — SERP length, intent keyword, the differentiator,
no brand-first title — and leave the wording free to iterate.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_015mWQnpye9F299NVRCCSRvj

nextjs-app/app/admissions/page.tsx

@@ -5,9 +5,11 @@ import { AdmissionsView } from '@/components/AdmissionsView';
 export const dynamic = 'force-static';
 
 export const metadata: Metadata = {
-  title: 'School Admissions Guide',
+  // Deadlines and offer days are what gets searched, and what this page is
+  // genuinely best at — the countdowns are live.
+  title: { absolute: 'School Admissions Deadlines & Offer Days | schoolcompare' },
   description:
-    'Understand the Primary and Secondary school admissions process in England, with live countdowns to every key deadline and National Offer Day.',
+    'Every key date for primary and secondary school admissions in England, with live countdowns to the application deadline and National Offer Day.',
   alternates: { canonical: absoluteUrl('/admissions') },
 };
 

nextjs-app/app/compare/page.tsx

@@ -30,9 +30,12 @@ export async function generateMetadata(
   const { urns } = await searchParams;
 
   const base: Metadata = {
-    title: 'Compare Schools',
+    // Deliberately not the homepage's phrase. Two pages chasing "compare
+    // schools" is how a site competes with itself; this one takes the tool
+    // phrasing instead.
+    title: 'School Comparison Tool — Up to Five at Once | schoolcompare',
     description:
-      'Compare schools in England side by side — Ofsted inspections, KS2 and GCSE results against the England average, admissions odds and school community.',
+      'Put up to five English schools in one table: SATs and GCSE results against the England average, Ofsted grades, and the distance places were offered.',
     keywords:
       'school comparison, compare schools, Ofsted comparison, school admissions, KS2 comparison, primary school performance',
     alternates: { canonical: absoluteUrl('/compare') },

nextjs-app/app/layout.tsx

@@ -48,10 +48,11 @@ export const metadata: Metadata = {
     statusBarStyle: 'default',
   },
   title: {
-    default: 'schoolcompare | Compare School Performance',
+    default: 'Compare Schools Side by Side | schoolcompare',
     template: '%s | schoolcompare',
   },
-  description: 'Compare primary and secondary school SATs and GCSE performance across England',
+  description:
+    'Put five English schools on one screen — SATs, GCSE results, Ofsted grades, and how close you had to live to get a place. Free, no sign-up.',
   keywords: 'school comparison, KS2 results, KS4 results, primary school, secondary school, England schools, SATs results, GCSE results',
   authors: [{ name: 'schoolcompare' }],
   manifest: '/manifest.json',
@@ -61,16 +62,18 @@ export const metadata: Metadata = {
   metadataBase: new URL(SITE_URL),
   openGraph: {
     type: 'website',
-    title: 'schoolcompare | Compare School Performance',
-    description: 'Compare primary and secondary school SATs and GCSE performance across England',
+    title: 'Compare Schools Side by Side | schoolcompare',
+    description:
+      'Put five English schools on one screen — SATs, GCSE results, Ofsted grades, and how close you had to live to get a place.',
     url: SITE_URL,
     siteName: 'schoolcompare',
   },
   twitter: {
     // summary_large_image now that there is an image worth showing.
     card: 'summary_large_image',
-    title: 'schoolcompare | Compare School Performance',
-    description: 'Compare primary and secondary school SATs and GCSE performance across England',
+    title: 'Compare Schools Side by Side | schoolcompare',
+    description:
+      'Put five English schools on one screen — SATs, GCSE results, Ofsted grades, and how close you had to live to get a place.',
   },
 };
 

nextjs-app/app/page.tsx

@@ -34,8 +34,21 @@ interface HomePageProps {
  * saying the brand twice.
  */
 export const metadata: Metadata = {
-  title: { absolute: 'schoolcompare | Compare every school in England' },
-  description: 'Search and compare school performance across England',
+  /*
+   * Intent in the title, differentiator in the description.
+   *
+   * These queries are owned by the DfE's own "Compare school performance"
+   * service, and the old title — brand first, then a near-paraphrase of that
+   * service's name — gave a searcher no reason to pick us over it. It drew
+   * 0.43% CTR at position 6.1 while the brand query drew 9.16% from the same
+   * neighbourhood, so the ranking was never the problem.
+   *
+   * The title now matches what people type. The description carries the one
+   * fact gov.uk does not publish: how close you had to live to get a place.
+   */
+  title: { absolute: 'Compare Schools Side by Side | schoolcompare' },
+  description:
+    'Put five English schools on one screen — SATs, GCSE results, Ofsted grades, and how close you had to live to get a place. Free, no sign-up.',
   // This page reads eleven search params. They filter a result set; they do
   // not make a new document. Collapsing every combination onto "/" stops the
   // homepage competing with itself for its own head terms.

nextjs-app/app/rankings/page.tsx

@@ -18,8 +18,11 @@ interface RankingsPageProps {
 }
 
 export const metadata: Metadata = {
-  title: 'School Rankings',
-  description: 'Top-ranked schools by SATs and GCSE performance across England',
+  // 'School Rankings' matched nothing anyone types. League tables is the
+  // phrase parents actually search, and it spikes each results day.
+  title: { absolute: 'Primary & Secondary School League Tables | schoolcompare' },
+  description:
+    'Rank English schools by SATs results, GCSEs, Progress 8 or Attainment 8, and filter by local authority or year. Built from the DfE’s own figures.',
   keywords: 'school rankings, top schools, best schools, KS2 rankings, KS4 rankings, school league tables',
   // Param forms (?metric=&local_authority=&year=&phase=) collapse here for
   // now. W3 replaces them with real indexable paths.