19 Lessons I learned from a year of SEO split testing

A YEAR OF SEO SPLIT
TESTING CHANGED
HOW I THOUGHT
SEO WORKED
@dom_woodman

Hmm that did
nothing
Crushing
failure
Ooh traffic went up

All those links I’m building.

How does SEO testing
work & what do you need?

Getting started & learning
how to think about testing

More than you wanted to know
about titles and metas.

Testing resource
heavy investments

Structured data &
dangerous assumptions

How testing changes
relationships

SEO split testing is template basedHere’s our example website
Home
Animals
Cats Dogs Unicorns Badgers

CatsCats
We want to test two templates for our animals pages

CRO test - Different users, see different templates on the same pages
1

CRO test - Different users, see different templates on the same pages
1
2
Cats BadgersDogs Unicorns

Cats Dogs
SEO test - different users see the same templates on different pages
1
2
Cats Dogs
Cats Dogs

SEO test - different users see the same templates on different pages
1
2

Then we measure the change in traffic, e.g. 3% daily increase

The test is significant when the shaded area crosses 0

In this case it happened here:

Black is organic traffic for the variant

Take all the data to left and use that to make the model

The model of the variant is the blue line

Compare the model to the variant after the start date

In this case the black line is higher, it’s a positive test

A good model, fits with the variant before the start date

However this was my model. They don’t fit well.

How much traffic do you
need for SEO split testing?
Rule of thumb: you need roughly 1000 organic sessions a day to
the group of pages you’re testing.
@dom_woodman

That model you
just saw, only had
~60 sessions a day.

A model so perfectly null I thought I had forgotten to launch it

Thought leader.
PHD in AI.
Unbearably smug.

Can’t write
titles for shit.

Get a testing framework
You need to be able to iterate and learn from tests. Having a
shared framework, will help with this.
@dom_woodman

You don’t need the why
Knowing the why is great (find it if you can), but you don’t need
it to take action.
@dom_woodman

1. Reviews
2. Safety Information

Fast forward… more
tests happen.

Title tests usually change
traffic between ~5 - 15%
This stayed equivalent across site size and industry.
@dom_woodman

56% of all title tag
changes were negative
Around 37% were null and only 6% were actually positive. It’s really
hard to write a good title.
@dom_woodman

Writing titles
is just really
really hard.

You can’t stop testing
titles.
Titles exist in the context of the rest of a SERP, when everyone
copies your good title format (and they will) you’ll have to mix it
up again.
@dom_woodman

Title/meta effects typically
appear in 2-4 days.
It’s also easy to validate the changes have been picked up
because you can scrape it from the SERPS.
@dom_woodman

Javascript EnabledJavascript Disabled
Control

Javascript EnabledJavascript Disabled
Variant

Visible content on the
initial page load matters
Although there is a lot subtlety to how Google renders JS, we
haven’t covered here.
@dom_woodman

SEO content sometimes
helps… :(
Damn it.
@dom_woodman

The same changes have
different effects on
different sites.
This is the big one. There really isn’t best practice.
@dom_woodman

(Assuming it was topically similar). We’ve saved clients a lot of
money, by showing they could reduce content without an effect.
Reducing content on
non-article pages was
often null.
@dom_woodman

Adding structured data to category pages

$$$$$$ - 150K additional
sessions a month.
How did your last year go?

different sites.
This is the big one. There really isn’t best practice.
@dom_woodman
THIS TIME I
ACTUALLY
LEARNED IT

Structured data has an
effect outside of rich
snippets
Occasionally we got big 10-15% wins on important templates, it
varied wildly and was mostly null (never negative).
@dom_woodman

Periodically re-challenge
your beliefs
I was lucky to test a successful site first. In a different order, I
might’ve given up on my hypothesis, before finding the right site.
@dom_woodman

5 star
much value
very marketer
so dollars

0.0% change. Again impressively null.

If you don’t have intent,
bells and whistles fail.
5 star rich snippets increased traffic by 16% on the right site with the
right intent. When the intent wasn’t there, they appeared, but did
nothing.
@dom_woodman

<time itemprop="dateModified" datetime="{{date}}">
Updated on: {{date}}
</time>

Freshness does matter.
But I wouldn’t recommend faking last modified dates...
@dom_woodman

Agile testing can help
you take larger risks.
If you can measure and quickly roll out/roll back a test, you can try
things you might not normally feel comfortable doing.
@dom_woodman

You don’t need to argue,
when you can test.
When you have solid testing framework and can build things quickly
and easily, testing is easier than arguing and removes arguments
from a relationship.
@dom_woodman

Happiness isn’t just up
and to the right
Instead the focus turns to other metrics like how many tests are we
running, how can we improve the testing process.
@dom_woodman

A negative test you rolled
back is a bullet dodged
Negative tests feel like wasted time. Once you realise without
testing you probably would’ve rolled out, it feels a lot better.
@dom_woodman

You’re about to be
forced out of silos.
You’re going to need to coordinate and work tightly with product
and QA teams if you’re not already.
@dom_woodman

different sites.
Really can’t emphasize this one enough.
@dom_woodman

Get a testing framework.
Most tests fail or are null.
Having a framework will help you move faster and find those wins.
@dom_woodman

Testing will improve your
relationships.
You’ll have to spend less time arguing and it creates a culture of
curiosity.
@dom_woodman

Periodically re-challenge
your beliefs
You probably have some beliefs about what works or doesn’t work
which are wrong from blind chance. Re-test them.
@dom_woodman

Making changes to sections of pages
on templates
● Making SEO changes with tag
manager
● Cloud flare edge workers
● DistilledODN
General useful posts on testing
frameworks & velocity
● Hypothesis framework
● Running a weekly growth meeting
Do it yourself
How does split testing work?
● How does SEO split testing work?
Examples
● Pinterest - Demystifying SEO with
experiments
● Etsy - SEO title tag testing
Measuring SEO split tests
● Google’s original causal impact
paper
● A DIY tool for measuring SEO split
tests
● A walkthrough of the R Causal
Impact library

bit.ly/testing-year
@dom_woodman

19 Lessons I learned from a year of SEO split testing

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19 Lessons I learned from a year of SEO split testing