Having a website is practically a must for businesses nowadays. But in having a website comes the tricky aspect of having it meet the satisfaction of customers, who can be pretty fickle in what they like about a website. They may like something about it one time, and not like it the next. So that will mean having to run A/B tests on the website to find what is appealing to most consumers. That also means you may have to make changes to your website now and again. And by making constant changes to your website, there’s a chance your SEO may not remain intact.
A/B testing doesn’t mean you’ll be changing your website entirely. It’s not a redesign. It’s taking a webpage and testing various versions of it to see which produces the best results. It’s usually done with A/B testing software which will redirect some consumers to one version of the page and some to another version. There are some ways for you to have higher visibility despite there being different URLs because of the A/B testing, and your SEO remains intact:
1. Use a 302 redirect
Make sure you use the 302 redirect, and not the 301. The 302 is a temporary redirect, which alerts the search engines that the page will not be around for long. It will send them back to the usual URL and keep that URL indexed (not the temporary one).
2. Don’t cloak
This is a SEO black hat trick and against Google Webmaster guidelines. By cloaking, you trick search engine bots into following one webpage but show another page to users. It’s possible this could accidentally happen during A/B testing, so be mindful. You don’t want to be punished by having Google demote or remove your site from their search result.
3. Use Rel=”canonical”
Use this instead of a no index meta tag. This will make sure search engines will index your original URL. This tag will let the search engines understand that the variations you are testing are just that – close duplicates or variations of the original – and will group them as such and make sure they are not indexed. Just don’t use this tag on your control page.
4. Don’t Test For Long
Don’t run the test for more than 2-3 months. Any longer than that and Google might notice and prompt you to delete all your other pages because it’ll think you’re trying to deceive search engines. So once the test is over, update your site with your desired changes and remove all elements of the test as soon as possible (alternate URLs, testing scripts, etc.).
Since you’ll be testing SEO landing pages, make sure you:
1. Use SEO friendly URLs. Have keywords in your URL that are separated by dashes.
2. Have a Title Tag with the keyword somewhere near the beginning.
3. The H1 Heading should match the Title Tag (if possible) and contain the keyword.
4. Bold the keyword at least once in the text.
5. Have H2 Headings as subheadings and include the keywords similar or related to the keyword.
6. Use Images on your landing page that use descriptive alt text.
7. Use a few external links to show the search engines your page is related to other webpages.
8. Create separate landing pages for all the keywords you want to rank for.
Once you’ve created the landing pages, you will want to test these aspects:
*Headline
*Call to action
*Graphics used in relation to sales efforts
*Sales copy and/or product descriptions
Launch the A & B versions of your landing page and let the testing begin!
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