Following my recent SearchPilot webinar, I wanted to share a written summary of the key themes and questions we explored.
I hosted a conversation with Matthew Morrisey, Organic Search Director for Europe at Adidas, to learn how a global brand builds an SEO testing program that earns trust, unlocks resources, and drives decisions.
Matt sits at the sharp end of enterprise SEO. Every time we talk, I pick up something useful. This recap distills the ideas that stood out.
Key takeaways
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Insights matter as much as wins. Adidas treats insights as a core KPI, not a by-product. Tests that challenge assumptions or debunk best practices can shift strategy as powerfully as positive uplift.
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Mature programs focus on insight rate, not only cadence. Early momentum comes from running many tests. Over time, the focus shifts to running tests that are powerful enough to produce meaningful reads across wide page sets.
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Testing improves cross-team alignment. When SEO can validate product and UX changes with credible revenue impact, teams move from debating theories to making joint rollout decisions with confidence.
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Credible ROI changes internal conversations. Presenting SEO results in the same language and format as CRO helps leadership see SEO as a measurable growth lever, not a black box.
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Ideas can come from anywhere. A strong testing culture encourages contributions across levels and teams. Simple, pragmatic ideas often unlock disproportionately valuable insights.
The Key KPI You Might Be Missing: Insights
Wins pay the bills, but Matt’s team treats insights as a first-class outcome of the program. That thinking began by borrowing from CRO. A test that challenges assumptions can be as valuable as a winner, because it shifts strategy, protects useful features from being removed, or stops a poor rollout before it snowballs.
This matters when best practices do not align with reality. Google’s guidance describes the internet it would like to exist. Testing reveals the internet you compete in. Some things that look outdated still produce value in context. Without controlled experiments, you would not know.
From Test Cadence to Insight Rate
Every testing program starts with cadence. Run enough clean tests and you learn faster. Over time, Adidas moved toward insight rate. The aim is not only more tests, but more powerful tests that can move metrics and generate clear reads. That maturity shows up in scoping. If a page set is full of outliers, seasonality, or thin samples, it may never reach significance. It is better to pick ideas that touch a broader, more stable set of URLs or to reshape the cohort so the model can read the signal.
They also balance setup effort. Some tests are simple content changes that the team can ship through the CMS. Others need engineering time. Credible reads give you the evidence to ask for that time again. Without proof, engineering patience wears thin.
Using SEO Tests to Validate Product and UX Ideas
Great tests do not only start in the SEO backlog. Product and UX teams ship changes that affect organic performance.
Matt shared a case. A UX team changed a grid element to make it more descriptive. The CRO test was flat for conversion, so under normal rules it would not roll out. The SEO test showed a strong traffic lift. Because conversion did not drop, the joint read supported a rollout. This is the sweet spot for enterprise testing. You find hidden value in work another team already wants to do, and you align decisions across disciplines.
Executive Communication That Lands
Rankings and individual keyword swings are hard to turn into revenue stories. Testing gives credible revenue estimates that sit between the tiny numbers nobody believes and the huge projections nobody trusts. Presenting SEO results in the same slide format and language as CRO also raises credibility. You stop sounding like a silo and start sounding like part of the company’s test and learn culture. That helps with budget, hiring, and influence.
Compounding Trust and Resource Allocation
Proven SEO experiments generate internal trust. That trust unlocks engineering time for both future tests and rollouts. It also helps leadership see SEO as a repeatable growth lever rather than a black box. If you can point to a couple of tests each quarter with meaningful revenue impact, you are speaking the same language as product and finance.
What Transfers Across Markets, and What Does Not
Not everything that works in one country will work in another. Content in particular varies with localization and translation. Some technical wins can scale globally without re-testing, like a schema fix that is unlikely to harm any market. Content changes with risk should be re-tested locally. Adidas leans on a sensible split: market-level tests for lighter content work, global rollout for heavier technical changes once proven.
Where Good Test Ideas Come From
Ideas come from everywhere. Internal newsletters and case studies spark adaptation. CRO backlogs inspire SEO variants. Competitors provide prompts worth exploring. The team culture invites anyone to submit an idea, which lowers the barrier for juniors and surfaces simple changes that can outperform complex ones. A crisp example is adding a real USP such as free delivery into meta text when it is relevant and visible to users. Simple, clear, testable.
What You Can Borrow for Your Enterprise SEO Program
If you are building a similar program, here is the shape I would copy:
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Treat insights as a KPI alongside wins.
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Grow from cadence to insight rate by picking page sets and ideas that can move metrics.
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Use SEO tests to validate product and UX changes, not only SEO-specific work.
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Present results in the same format as other testing teams to build credibility.
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Choose where to re-test by risk. Roll out technical wins globally, localize content tests.
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Keep ideation open and pragmatic. Small, clean changes can unlock big reads.
Put Search in Control Mode with SearchPilot
Search is often the biggest channel and the least understood. SearchPilot makes SEO testable so leaders can move from guessing to knowing.
We run controlled experiments across category pages, product detail pages, navigation, and content, then deliver clear uplift with timelines and confidence. Teams progress from quick validation to a steady test cadence to full control, which turns search into a performance channel you can plan and fund.
If product grids, Merchant Center, and variant handling sit on your roadmap, we can start with a focused plan. We will review feed quality, encode variant attributes in titles, improve image coverage, and design a round of tests that match how people filter and buy. We will also set up measurement that reflects how grids form impressions and how that flows into clicks and revenue.
Stop trying to predict the future. Experiment to discover it. If you want tailored test ideas for your top PLPs and PDPs, schedule a demo and we will share a starter list and a clear path from validation to velocity to control.
