Introduction to SEO Testing
Google’s John Mueller and Martin Splitt discussed the importance of making changes to a web page, observing the SEO effect, and the importance of tracking those changes. Many people have been hesitant to make too many SEO changes due to a patent filed years ago about monitoring frequent SEO updates to catch attempts to manipulate search results. However, Mueller’s answer to this question is meaningful in the context of what’s considered safe.
Is It Okay To Make Content Changes For SEO Testing?
The context of the discussion was a hypothetical small business owner who has a website and doesn’t really know much about SEO. The situation is that they want to try something out to see if it will bring more customers. Martin Splitt set up the discussion as the business owner asking different people for their opinions on how to update a web page but receiving different answers. Splitt then asks whether going ahead and changing the page is safe to do.
Mueller affirmed that it’s okay to get ahead and try things out, commenting that most content management systems (CMS) enable a user to easily make changes to the content. He responded, “…for the most part you can just try things out. One of the nice parts about websites is, often, if you’re using a CMS, you can just edit the page and it’s live, and it’s done. It’s not that you have to do some big, elaborate …work to put it live.”
In the past, Google used to update its index once a month. So SEOs would make their web page changes and then wait for the monthly update to see if those changes had an impact. Nowadays, Google’s index is essentially on a rolling update, responding to new content as it gets indexed and processed, with SERPs being re-ranked in reaction to changes, including user trends where something becomes newsworthy or seasonal.
The Risks of Making Changes
Making changes to a small site that doesn’t have much traffic is an easy thing. Making changes to a website responsible for the livelihood of dozens, scores, or even hundreds of people is a scary thing. So when it comes to testing, you really need to balance the benefits against the possibility that a change might set off a catastrophic chain of events.
Monitoring The SEO Effect
Mueller and Splitt next talked about being prepared to monitor the changes. Mueller continued his answer, “It’s very easy to try things out, let it sit for a couple of weeks, see what happens and kind of monitor to see is it doing what you want it to be doing. I guess, at that point, when we talk about monitoring, you probably need to make sure that you have the various things installed so that you actually see what is happening.”
Perhaps setting up Search Console for your website so that you see the searches that people are doing. And, of course, some way to measure the goal that you want, which could be something perhaps in Analytics or perhaps there’s, I don’t know, some other way that you track in person if you have a physical store, like are people actually coming to my business after seeing my website.
User Behavior Analytics
Something that Mueller didn’t mention is the impact on user behavior on a web page. Does the updated content make people scroll less? Does it make them click on the wrong thing? Do people bounce out at a specific part of the web page? That’s the kind of data Google Analytics does not provide because that’s not what it’s for. But you can get that data with a free Microsoft Clarity account. Clarity is a user behavior analytics SaaS app. It shows you where (anonymized) users are on a page and what they do.
When Website Changes Go Wrong
Martin next talks about what happens when a change goes wrong. He makes the distinction between a technical change and changes for users. A technical change can be tested on a staging site, which is a sandboxed version of the website that search engines or users don’t see. This is actually a pretty good thing to do before updating WordPress plugins or doing something big like swapping out the template.
Mueller said that changes for SEO can’t be tested on a staged site, which means that whatever changes are made, you have to be prepared for the consequences. He shared, “…if you’re talking about something like a homepage, maybe one or two other pages, then probably within a week or two, you should see that reflected in Search. You can search for yourself initially. That’s not forbidden to search for yourself. It’s not that something will go wrong or anything. Searching for your site and seeing, whatever change that you made, has that been reflected.”
Conclusion
In conclusion, making changes to a web page to test the SEO effect is a normal part of the optimization process. It’s okay to try things out and see what happens, but it’s also important to monitor the changes and be prepared for the consequences. By using tools like Search Console and Analytics, and by testing technical changes on a staging site, you can minimize the risks and maximize the benefits of SEO testing. Remember to also consider user behavior analytics to get a full picture of how your changes are affecting your website and your users.