SEO Split Testing: When You Should Use It & Why?
SEO A/B split testing
A/B testing for SEO, also referred to as split testing, is the process of making small adjustments to SEO elements on your site’s web pages and monitoring the impact of these changes on the page’s SEO performance.
What types of websites can run SEO experiments?
Some websites, and parts of websites, aren’t suitable for running SEO split tests. To be able to run tests, there are two primary requirements:
- You need lots of pages on the same template.
- You need lots of traffic.
How much traffic? That’s a good question, and it depends on your website. Generally speaking, the more stable your traffic patterns are, the easier it will be to run experiments with less traffic. The more irregular the traffic to your website is, the more traffic you will need to build a robust traffic model.
What SEO elements can you test?
Title format and tags
The simplest changes to your page’s title tag, like where you used a keyword or your word choice and phrasing, can affect your page’s SEO performance. In your A/B test, try playing around with your titles and title tags to see how things change.
Meta descriptions
Your meta descriptions briefly tell searchers what a page’s digital content covers. In many cases, they’re the first things users read about your page (so you want to write it well!).
Sometimes even the slightest edits to your meta description like word choice, calls to action (CTAs), and secondary keyword usage can affect how many users choose to click on your website.
Image alt text
Google uses an image’s alt text to understand the subject matter of the image and page context. Adjusting your page’s image alt text to be more descriptive can help you to appear in Google Images search results.
Page content
The content of your page can significantly affect how your page ranks in the SERPs. When conducting an A/B test, consider adjusting a page’s content length, structure, and keyword usage to see how it influences your SEO rankings.
When Should You Consider It?
SEO split tests are important because it’s not always easy to tell why your presented marketing content isn’t ranking well. Split tests take some of the guesswork out of figuring out what you need to change. This type of testing also reduces the risk of unintentionally changing something that’s actually helping your content or page. It’s a good idea to engage SEO split tests if you’re noticing:
An inability to rank well after several months of trying
Lackluster performance by only certain pages on your digital site
Unexplained traffic decreases
Crucial steps of a strong split testing scenario
Step 1: Study your website data
Data, data, data! A strong split testing marketing campaign starts your website data. Use a website analytics tool and find weak spots in your conversion funnel, bounces as well as your top landing pages. This will help you determine the right approach and prioritize testing ideas.
Step 2: Form a strong hypothesis
A split test should never be based on a personal opinion or feeling. For your split URL testing campaign, make an assumption on which to base the test so that in the end you will know why you are seeing the results you are seeing. A strong testing hypothesis also describes a specific goal.
Step 3: Test your hypothesis
Now it’s up to you to create a variation and split test it against the original page. In order to find out which one is more effective, use your insights from step 1 as a baseline for measuring your results.