Can you be sure that your SEO is working well behind the scenes? Here are some tools and tips to help you to spot low-hanging fruit. You’ve undoubtedly spent hours upon hours optimising your website. Now, you need to think about SEO tests that can measure your progress and help you increase your rankings on Google.

After all, you want to be sure that your SEO will raise your position on the search engine results page and increase your traffic.

SEO Testing Definition

Essentially, SEO testing is the process of improving your rankings by analysing what works and what doesn’t for your website. Whenever you make a change to your SEO strategy, you have to analyse the results of the change and make decisions. 

You’ll need to conduct some SEO experiments to improve your overall strategy and get you closer to your goals. Running SEO tests on your website can be incredibly interesting. You’re tapping into the figurative clockwork behind your site and figuring out what makes it tick. 

SEO test indicators include clicks, impressions, rank position, click through rate, and number of queries ranked for. 

How to Do SEO Testing

Like any project, you need to establish a clear goal before you start. For SEO tests,  start with a question you want to be answered. Make a guess at what your answer may be. Pick a test for that specific variable and get going! 

The most efficient and reliable way to test new search engine optimisation strategies is A/B Testing. You set up two scenarios simultanesouly with only one difference between them. Run the test and see which SEO tests perform better! 

Doing the SEO tests at the same time is important because it makes your test more reliable and accurate. If you test the same scenario, with one change, in two different months, you’re dealing with two very different sets of conditions. One scenario performing better than the other could have nothing to do with the change you made. 

SEO Testing Tools

There are loads of SEO tests you can run on your website to increase your rankings. You’ll learn about several helpful SEO optimisation tests in just a few minutes. 

1. Load Speeds for SEO 

In an age of instant gratification, websites that take longer than 2.2 seconds to load seldom make it to the first page of Google. 

The faster your website loads, the better. Test your website’s load speed with a free SEO testing tool like the one at WebPageTest.org!  

You can improve load speeds by reducing file sizes, for example. 

Update Your Old Content

If you’ve ever sat wondering what to do with old blog posts, you should definitely consider refreshing blog content a couple times a year.

Original and relevant content on your website is treated favourably by Google already, and fresh content is even better. 

Updating your blog posts shows Google that your content is not only relevant, but recent, too. It’s a quick and easy way to increase your rankings and help out users who’re looking for answers. 

Optiomise for AMP

It’s no secret that Google cherishes AMP websites. What is AMP in SEO, you may be asking? AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, and refers to the way Google prioritises mobile pages over desktop pages in SERPs.

Optimise your website for mobile users and you’re sure to increase your rankings. Particularly since the lion share of search occurs on mobile phones, these days.

Test Title Tags and Meta Descriptions 

Your title tags and meta descriptions carry their weight in gold on SERPs. They’re a tiny sliver of insight into what you offer. You need to make sure those few characters do their work and attract users to your site. 

Title tags are defined as the specific title of a web page, displayed as the clickable headline of your search result. Title tags help search engines to understand the content on your page and direct users to it accordingly. 

Meta desriptions are snippets of up to 150 characters that summarise the content on your page. Think of it as the tagline to attract your users attention and entice them to click on your title tag. 

It goes without saying that great titles and meta descriptions are vital to good rankings. Test out which meta descriptions and title tags work best on important pieces of content. You’re looking for the most clicks to determine success, here. 

Harness the Power of LSI Keywords 

The thing about keywords is you should never stop once you’ve got just a few. You’ll have your main keywords, of course, that you focus on the most for rankings. But don’t underestimate the power of LSI keywords. 

LSI keywords are supplemental keywords that work wonders when included in your content, alongside your primary keywords. Test this strategy by adding a few LSI keywords to a web page of yours and see how it impacts your rankings. 

For examples of LSI keywords, pop your primary keyword into the Google search bar and see what it suggests. Those are great LSI keywords to include in your content when relevant. 

Test Out Different Keywords

On the topic of keywords, you already know that some are stronger than others. Consider the intent of your user. When they’re typing your keywords into Google, what are they expecting to find? What are they looking for? 

Test out different keywords for a specific webpage and see how your clicks change. 

Social Signals and SEO

Social media is an incredibly powerful tool for promoting your business. Social signals are also unbelievably important to your search rankings. You want to get consisten social signals coming through to your website.

This indicates to Google that you’re an active, consistent and trustworthy source of information. 

You can use SEO tests to work out which platforms are doing the most work for you. Try posting to your social media sites more often for a couple of weeks and see how that impacts your rankings. Post links to your blog posts and other web pages to attract users. 

Why You Need to Run SEO Tests

Ultimately, running SEO tests will help you to get your website ranking. You have to work out what’s not working very well before you can fix any problems effectively. 

Run some of these SEO tests on your website and record the feedback. With a little analysis, you can work your way towards increased traffic, customers and ultimately, leads!