Competitions are rising with each passing day. So, it is already time for you to face your competitors head-on. If you already run a business and care for a digital presence, you must have heard of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). There are endless benefits of SEO for businesses out there. But, before implementing the final changes, you need to perform SEO testing to make sure what are changes work best for you. This article will cover everything about SEO testing.
What is SEO testing?
SEO is referred to the process of performing the required changes to your site and then measuring the impact on organic search rankings or traffic.
SEO testing helps you to find out what works for your site. If someone has seen positive flow after altering something, it does not mean that making the same alteration will work out for you as well.
It consumes both resources and time when you roll out SEO. If the change made by you is not bringing positive results, it was a total waste of effort. SEO testing helps you find out whether something will have a positive result within less time by making use of fewer resources or not.
Types of SEO tests:
There are three major kinds of SEO tests suggested by an SEO agency. They are as follows:
SEO serial testing: In serial testing, you will have to change all of the pages existing on your site at once and notice the outcome.
SEO time-based testing: In time-based testing, you will have to make a change to a single page and then find out how it works out.
SEO A/B testing: A/B testing is also known as split-testing. Here you need to change few pages. Then, you will have to compare how fair is the changed pages than the unchanged pages. The group of changed pages is called the variant group, and the group of unchanged pages is called the control group. It is the most popular test and is highly recommended.
How to run an SEO test?
For running an SEO test, follow the steps given below:
Make a hypothesis:
It is a prediction. Here you will need to decide what you are going to modify or change and how you think that it will be affecting the SEO visibility of your website.
Consider a group of pages that have many things in common for minimizing the variables that can negatively impact your test result. Make sure that your hypothesis is an educated guess and not anything random.
Select your pages:
Run your tests with the pages that receive decent organic traffic because you will not be able to learn from a page that gets little to no organic traffic. Your test results may be key skewed. You may use Google Analytics for this purpose.
Pull out a random sample:
As you need to run the A/B split-test, changes will be required for a subset of pages. The controlled group will be formed by the remaining ones. You may use an SEO testing tool, or you can do things manually as well.
Decide on the duration of the test:
Run your test until you collect a decent amount of data. Run the test long enough so that Google can re-crawl all of the pages in your variant group. It may take few days to few months. Everything depends on the amount of traffic you receive and the number of pages you have.
Decide on how you are going to track the test results:
Before commencing with making any change, you will require a way to track results. The best way to do so is by using an SEO testing tool, or you can contact SEO Consultant if you don’t know how to use these tools.
Perform the changes:
Now, the time has come for you to implement the AB test. Do not make any change in the control group, and only change the variable. The changes made by your need must be recorded. Make sure that you have a way to revert in case your SEO test has a negative outcome.
Check the results:
If you are making use of a testing tool, it will show some graphs for you to evaluate the test. But, if you can also do it manually by using Google Search Control, Google Analytics, or a rank tracking tool.
Conclusion:
Everyone has an opinion when it comes to what works or what does not work. The best way to find out is by doing an SEO test. So, SEO testing is data-driven and not opinion-driven. Often, you are not sure about the changes that you make, and it may impact your SEO negatively. Thus, to limit any of the negative outcomes, it is always a good idea to opt for SEO testing beforehand.
