Chances are, as you’ve gone through the process of designing and developing your website, you’ve already learned about the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) to drive traffic to your site. But what SEO moves are the RIGHT moves to make? If you simply alter keywords and/or links on each of your pages on a whim, it’s extremely difficult to tell if those random changes are really making a positive difference- especially when you can’t tell what results other variations (or NO change at all) would have produced.
Enter the power of testing. Although there’s no exact science or magic formula to the “dos and don’ts” of SEO, through the use of some creative experimentation, you can become more aware of what IS and is NOT working for your company’s website.
KEY #1 – IT’S ALL ABOUT CONTROL
First off, as with many experiments, particularly those that are comparing some “thing” alongside another, we need a control group. As mentioned above, it’s not enough to just change the keywords associated with every page on your site and kick back, waiting to see the huge change in Google ranking drop into your lap.
It IS indeed possible that, in the days and weeks following such a change, you may see positive moves in the metrics you track. But how can you know for certain that those changes you see are due to the change(s) you had made? Simple answer: you can’t. It’s just as possible that some other cause led to the ranking change you’ve witnessed. Perhaps a competitor’s site has suffered recently due to poor SEO on their part. While that can still be okay for you, you don’t want to be incorrectly led to believe that it was because of the modifications you made.
To avoid making this mistake, identify several pages on your website that get similar amounts of traffic, have similar contents topics, and essentially would interest the same type of online visitor. Make your changes only to SOME of those pages but not to others. As you monitor the stats in the coming weeks, this gives you an unaltered control group that you can compare against those pages that did receive the changes.
KEY # 2 – REPEAT, REPEAT, REPEAT
Once you’ve decided that the SEO changes you’ve made have had the positive impact you’d hoped for, it’s now tempting to go ahead and make those same changes to all of your website’s pages. But not quite so fast.
SEO testing is an ongoing process and you want to be absolutely certain that your modifications are the cause of the increased traffic and ranking results that you’re seeing. It’s time to repeat what you did above, this time with a few additional pages on your site. If you repeat this on several occasions and, each time, you see comparable (and positive) effects, then and only then, it’s safe to say that your hunch is now valid enough to make those changes across the board for all similar pages on your domain.
For more assistance with SEO testing and other search engine optimization solutions for your business, message us on our Contact page. Your Design Online is committed to helping with all of the web needs that will ensure your company’s online growth.
Have any tips that you’ve learned from your own SEO testing experiments? Share it with other readers in a comment below!
