You’ve flipped the switch on your new WordPress website — time to watch the money roll in and plan for what color McLaren you’re going to buy. Not quite. Now the fun begins. You’re ready to begin optimizing your site and crushing the competition.

The best way to unlock significant growth on your site is through SEO experiments. This process involves making small, controlled changes to your site in order to gain data-driven insights into what moves the needle on your SEO rankings. While there is always some risk of harming traffic when engaging in SEO experiments, it’s the proven pathway to optimizing your site’s performance.

This article will guide readers through the process of running safe and effective SEO experiments on a high-traffic WordPress site.

Why SEO Experiments Are Crucial for High-Traffic Sites

There is plenty of guidance available on winning SEO tactics and strategies. These best practices should not be ignored. But it’s important to note that every website is unique. Best practices will help, to a point. To excel, you need to do your own SEO experiments. Even small SEO changes can have an impact on large volumes of traffic.

SEO experiments on your high-traffic WordPress site will help you identify what truly works for your specific audience and website. The important word to keep in mind here is controlled. Being thoughtful and controlled, like a scientist, in your SEO experiments will reduce the risk around SEO changes. If managed carefully, they will lead to valuable insights.

The Golden Rules of SEO Experimentation on High-Traffic Sites

For effective and safe SEO experimentation on WordPress sites, your approach should align with some fundamental rules. Keep these in mind as you plan out and then execute your experiments:

• Start with small, controlled changes and iterate.
• Focus on only one variable at a time.
• Have a clear rollback plan before starting an experiment.
• Be meticulous in monitoring your site’s performance during experiments.
• Always prioritize user experience in your experiments.

Step 1: Define Clear Hypotheses and Goals

A hypothesis is an educated guess about something. It is based on available data and direct observation. This is the starting point of any SEO experiment on your high-traffic WordPress website. SEO experiments should be organized around a framework of SMART goals, which are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. A SMART approach leads to sound outcomes in your experiments.

Here’s an example of an SEO hypothesis: “If we change the title tagging structure on our 5 top-performing web pages, we will see a 10% bump in click-throughs from organic search results.”

There are a few different go-to approaches to SEO experiments on your high-traffic WordPress website. The first approach is staged rollouts, which involve gradually implementing changes to a small percentage of users or pages at a time. This approach allows you to iterate small changes without the inherent risk of a site-wide change negatively impacting your user experience.

The second approach, multivariate testing, allows you to simultaneously roll out different variations of a particular element on a page. The testing software swaps out different variations of your landing page and serves them up randomly to visitors. This approach provides actionable insights into the relationships between different page elements.

The last and most well-known approach to SEO experiments is A/B testing, where visiting traffic is split between two variations of a landing page element. This approach is simpler, faster to execute, and easier to understand the impact of changes compared to multivariate testing.

A/B testing can be done through WordPress plugins. With many options available, you want to choose plugins that support a strong user experience. A few options that meet this criteria include Thrive Optimize, Nelio A/B Testing, and OptinMonster. 

Step 3: Run Experiments Carefully in WordPress

Once you have picked the right experiment type and tool, and you have developed your hypothesis, you are ready to begin running your SEO experiments on your WordPress site. Care and caution should be top of mind as you start your SEO experiments.

Double-check all the settings before implementing. Taking a quality assurance approach to the setup, functioning, and data accuracy of the experiment will help prevent biases and ensure reliable results. Also, play close attention to the site speeds and user experience, making sure that your experiment is not negatively impacting these important website attributes.

Step 4: Monitor Performance and Collect Data

As your SEO experiment in your high-traffic WordPress site runs, keep a close eye on critical metrics including rankings, organic traffic, conversions, and user engagement. While your hypothesis may be focusing on a single metric, it’s good to gather data around all your critical SEO metrics so you don’t miss any noteworthy changes. Making use of analytics platforms such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console will help you gather accurate data in an environment that will allow you to easily analyze it for valuable insights.

Have a defined testing period in mind for your experiment to run that will allow you to collect sufficient data. Best practices suggest a 2-week minimum and sometimes as long as 8 weeks in order to run through business cycles and capture a viable record of visitor behavior. Specific experiment timeframes will depend on the site’s overall traffic volume.

Step 5: Analyze Results and Iterate

Was your hypothesis validated? That’s the question you seek to answer as you analyze the collected data of your SEO experiment on your high-traffic WordPress site. Statistical significance is a primary consideration, determining the P-value and confidence level of your results. Sample size is another variable to look closely at, with larger sample sizes increasing the value of the results.

From a practical perspective, look closely at the lift rate of each change to see if it warrants a closer look. Analyzing your data puts you in a position to then refine your SEO experiments and begin iterating new variations. Keep in mind that any results are insights. Even if your hypothesis is proved wrong, you have that insight to help drive future improvements on your site.

Step 6: Document and Scale Successful SEO Experiments

Taking a careful approach to your SEO experiments also means closely documenting the details, including the initial setup, results, and learnings. This will make the iteration process more streamlined and easier to continue.

If you find your hypothesis is proven correct, you are ready to begin incrementally rolling out the change to wider groups of visitors. Continue iterating as you do it, experimenting and refining with each new group, making sure that your hypothesis holds true across wider groups of visitors.

Let the Data Guide Your Decision-Making

Running SEO experiments on your high-traffic WordPress site is the surest path for continuous improvements in performance. Minimize the risks by always leading with the data, letting the data drive your decision-making. Stick with this data-driven approach and soon enough you’ll likely see more conversions, more revenue, and maybe even that McLaren in the color of your choice.

Pressable: Your SEO Experiment Foundation

Pressable makes it easy for you to conduct SEO experiments on high-traffic WordPress sites. We provide a hosting foundation that delivers unmatched speed, security, and reliability. Your site’s page loads are optimized to deliver an efficient and reliable experience to your visitors.

We provide you with the technical confidence you need to focus on improving your visitor experience through extensive SEO experiments, without worrying about harming your SEO rankings.

Pressable—part of the Automattic family that also includes WordPress.com, WordPress VIP, and WooCommerce—offers experts with the skills and knowledge to effectively manage your WordPress site. If you’re considering switching to managed WordPress hosting, schedule a demo to see how Pressable can support your ongoing optimization and growth.