Thoughts from the SearchPilot team

SEO and product teams are focused on different metrics. While product teams care about website users, SEO teams focus on organic traffic. But as Google changes algorithms to incorporate more UX signals, the decision to keep the two areas separate can hurt company goals. SearchPilot explains the relationship between UX and SEO, and how SEO split-testing can give teams more data on both.

In recent years, there has been a sea change in the way that professional sports teams are coached and managed as a result of more available data and new statistical techniques for making the most of it.

I’m going to argue that the rise of testing capabilities in SEO is causing a similar sea change, and that everyone responsible for organic search performance for large websites should be aware of these changes and building them into their plans.

Ultimately, modern on-site SEO for large websites should dramatically cut down untested changes and focus instead on new content, and deploying winning tests.

The relationship between engineering and SEO teams is growing even more important as website traffic and engagement continue to be key to a company’s success. However, given the common disconnect between the two teams, the SearchPilot’s CTO, Tom Anthony outlined some of his learned best practices for the teams to work effectively together.

Simply running SEO tests isn’t enough to guarantee success or even valuable data insights. But by establishing the right setup, processes, and systems to run tests, teams can better trust the entire process. Learn from this comprehensive playbook on what to consider when designing an SEO test, and start testing yourself!

One of the things we value most at SearchPilot is speed. With SEO split testing, speed is what makes more testing possible, creates a lighter lift on teams' time, and provides more insights to work off of. Learn how we approach speed thoughtfully in both our product and process for our customers.

We hear from teams all the time about the woes of homegrown SEO tests, the headaches of manually building tests, and the overall slow process. At SearchPilot, we work with many teams to help them move past these issues with SEO split testing. Learn more about how SEO split testing can address the issues of homegrown solutions and drive better outcomes.

Ecommerce websites are pressed to drive high volumes of traffic, and convert customers, making them a great fit for SEO split-testing. By using SEO split-testing ecommerce websites can test theories, launch tests quickly and make data-informed changes based on results. Instead of going off of assumptions of what’s best or what might drive the most traffic, teams can now work off of tests and results.

Job websites typically drive large amounts of traffic, and are used both by companies looking to hire, and candidates looking for jobs, making them a perfect place for SEO split testing. SEO split testing is ideal for job websites, because it allows them to consider both audiences' needs, while optimizing for traffic and experience.

When you have a national or international presence, you can easily end up with thousands of location-specific pages on your website which can create unique SEO opportunities. Learn more about some interesting SEO tests we have run on sites with scalable site sections of local landing pages, and the results they achieved.

If you have millions of visitors per month and you are not doing SEO testing, you are likely leaving a lot of money on the table. Yet, when you are testing, you may still be dealing with results that are not statistically significant or are inconclusive, especially when focusing on isolated sections.

In these instances, there has always been a lot of debate about the best ways for companies to not incorporate testing but handle non-statistically significant results in their marketing.

Learn more about how we encourage our customers to think about them.