A/B Testing, also known as split testing, is an experiment that involves creating two versions of a webpage and directing half of your audience to one version and the other half to the alternate version to determine which performs better.
Let’s say you want to test whether changing the copy on a CTA button at the bottom of one of your web pages will improve its click-through rate. You can run an A/B test to show button A to half of your webpage’s visitors and button B to the other half. The test will show which button had the higher click-through rate ultimately leading to better conversion rates and search rankings.
However, despite the obvious benefits, if not thoughtfully executed, your split test can negatively impact your SEO efforts.
Throughout this article, we will share how our team ensures a website’s search performance doesn’t take a hit while conducting A/B testing.
Why A/B Test
A/B testing allows you to determine which version of a webpage is more effective in engaging people, ultimately leading to improvements in leads, traffic, click-through rates, and other metrics. It allows you to conduct experiments on virtually every aspect of your website to determine the optimal experience for your audience.
A/B Testing and Its Impact on SEO
Google backs split testing, but you need to be mindful that you’re not engaging in black hat tactics while doing it. In order to minimize the impact on your website’s search performance while conducting A/B tests, follow these four steps:
1. Don’t Cloak
Cloaking refers to deceiving robots by showing them a different set of content than you are showing to human users on your website. In other words, hiding content from robots so as to not damage your website’s visibility.
Cloaking is an improper SEO technique that is against Google’s guidelines. By employing it, you are risking your website’s online credibility.
2. Set Your Variant Pages to Noindex
Ensure to set your variant pages to noindex. If test pages are seen as indexed by search engine bots, they are considered duplicate content and will cannibalize your rankings.
3. Use rel=“canonical” to prevent duplicate content issues
The rel=”canonical” tag is a directive that tells search engines the preferred or original version of a page. When running an experiment with multiple URLs, use this to indicate to the search engine that the original URL is preferred to the one being tested.
Improperly using the rel=”canonical” tag on your variant pages will create confusion around which version is the original. In extreme cases, this can result in your ranking page being removed from Google’s index.
We suggest using the Yoast Plugin for WordPress to set your original page as the canonical URL when split testing a specific page, as well as to set your test pages to noindex as mentioned above.
4. Use Caution When ‘Removing’ Page A
If your test reveals that your variant page is more effective, be sure not to carelessly remove the original version. By just deleting the original page you will be left with a 404 error. The best path forward is to replicate the content from your variant and paste it on the original page. Then you can safely start your next experiment without hurting your SEO.
How A/B Testing Can Help You to Optimize Your Website
The more users that visit and spend time on your site, the more likely it ranks highly on SERPs. Google is committed to enabling businesses of all sizes to improve their user experiences. Therefore, by acquiring a thorough understanding of conducting and implementing these tests, you can increase the overall visibility of your website.
In basic terms, don’t guess what will encourage users to visit and spend more time on your website proving it with A/B testing. Get in touch with Method + Metric to learn how.A/B Testing, also known as split testing, is an experiment that involves creating two versions of a webpage and directing half of your audience to one version and the other half to the alternate version to determine which performs better.
Let’s say you want to test whether changing the copy on a CTA button at the bottom of one of your web pages will improve its click-through rate. You can run an A/B test to show button A to half of your webpage’s visitors and button B to the other half. The test will show which button had the higher click-through rate ultimately leading to better search rankings and conversion rates.
However, despite the obvious benefits, if not thoughtfully executed, your split test can negatively impact your SEO efforts.
Throughout this article, we will share how our team ensures a website’s search performance doesn’t take a hit while conducting A/B testing.
Why A/B Test
A/B testing allows you to determine which version of a webpage is more effective in engaging people, ultimately leading to improvements in leads, traffic, click-through rates, and other metrics. It allows you to conduct experiments on virtually every aspect of your website to determine the optimal experience for your audience.
A/B Testing and Its Impact on SEO
Google backs split testing, but you need to be mindful that you’re not engaging in black hat tactics while doing it. In order to minimize the impact on your website’s search performance while conducting A/B tests, follow these four steps:
1. Don’t Cloak
Cloaking refers to deceiving robots by showing them a different set of content than you are showing to human users on your website. In other words, hiding content from robots so as to not damage your website’s visibility.
Cloaking is an improper SEO technique that is against Google’s guidelines. By employing it, you are risking your website’s online credibility.
2. Set Your Variant Pages to Noindex
Ensure to set your variant pages to noindex. If test pages are seen as indexed by search engine bots, they are considered duplicate content and will cannibalize your rankings.
3. Use rel=“canonical” to prevent duplicate content issues
The rel=”canonical” tag is a directive that tells search engines the preferred or original version of a page. When running an experiment with multiple URLs, use this to indicate to the search engine that the original URL is preferred to the one being tested.
Improperly using the rel=”canonical” tag on your variant pages will create confusion around which version is the original. In extreme cases, this can result in your ranking page being removed from Google’s index.
We suggest using the Yoast Plugin for WordPress to set your original page as the canonical URL when split testing a specific page, as well as to set your test pages to noindex as mentioned above.
4. Use Caution When ‘Removing’ Page A
If your test reveals that your variant page is more effective, be sure not to carelessly remove the original version. By just deleting the original page you will be left with a 404 error. The best path forward is to replicate the content from your variant and paste it on the original page. Then you can safely start your next experiment without hurting your SEO.
How A/B Testing Can Help You to Optimize Your Website
The more users that visit and spend time on your site, the more likely it ranks highly on SERPs. Google is committed to enabling businesses of all sizes to improve their user experiences. Therefore, by acquiring a thorough understanding of conducting and implementing these tests, you can increase the overall visibility of your website.
In basic terms, don’t guess what will encourage users to visit and spend more time on your website proving it with A/B testing. Get in touch with Method + Metric to learn how.
A/B testing allows you to determine which version of your website is working better in terms of reaching your goals. Ultimately resulting in increases in leads, hits, click through rates, etc. It allows you to conduct an experiment on virtually anything and implement the outcome that engages the majority of your consumers – enabling you to optimize your website to exactly what increases your conversion rates.
A/B Testing + SEO
Google backs split testing and offers the option to conduct an experiment through Google Analytics. However, you may be wondering what search engine robots see on your site when you’re conducting an A/B test? Will experimenting with different content change how your site ranks?
In order to minimize the impact on your website’s search performance while conducting split testing, follow these four steps:
1. Don’t Cloak
Cloaking refers to deceiving robots by showing them a different set of content than you are showing to human users on your website. In other words, hiding content from robots so as to not damage your website’s visibility.
2. Don’t Index Test Pages
Ensure to not index your test pages because your original page is your ideal page (until the experiment proves otherwise of course). By allowing search engines to index your test page, you risk the chance of your test page to be indexed by Google. This can easily damage your conversion rates.
3. Use rel=“canonical”
rel=”canonical” tells search engines the preferred version of a page. Use this when running an experiment with multiple URL’s to indicate to the search engine that the original URL is preferred to the one being tested. Not using rel=”canonical” can cause duplicate content issues which may cause Google to drop or remove one of the pages out of its index because of the similarity of the content. This can result in your original (and perhaps better) page to be removed from Google’s index and in turn affect your website’s visibility.
We suggest using the Yoast Plugin for WordPress to set your original page as the canonical URL when split testing a certain page, as well as to set your test pages to noindex as mentioned above.
4. Use Caution When ‘Removing’ Page A
Once you’ve finished running your A/B test, if the test shows that page B outperforms page A, your automatic response will be to delete page A and implement page B. However, don’t forget that the test page is not yet indexed and deleting the original page will leave users with a 404 error when they click on your original page on search engines. It is important to either:
1 – Redesign the original page to duplicate the content and design of the test page.
or
2 – Index the test page and redirect page A to page B.
How A/B Testing can Help you to Optimize your Website
We know that adhering to and optimising your website for Google’s ever-changing algorithms can improve your website’s visibility. We also all know that good content is an extremely important factor to properly optimize your websites for Google. Finally, we all know that a combination of good, up to date content and an appealing website design encourages users to visit and re-visit your website.
That being said, website traffic affects our website’s visibility on Google. The more users that visit and spend time on your site, the more likely it ranks highly on SERPs. Conducting content experiments to see what engages and appeals to users and then implementing them will increase your website’s overall visibility.
In basic terms, don’t guess what will encourage users to visit and spend more time on your website, prove it by using A/B testing. Get in touch with Method + Metric to book an SEO audit.
