Are you unsure of which path to take with some of your pages? This is a fairly common problem for businesses that are considering search engine optimisation. One option is to take a short amount of time, and do some testing.

Thorough testing of SEO plans can take up several weeks, extending the initial optimisation period beyond what most businesses are prepared to commit. Having your site in limbo is certainly not an attractive prospect – but never fear. You can test some of your options in a sneaky way, one which can provide you with some extremely satisfactory results.

The multivariate page test

Consider these two pages. One uses a colourful design, with only a little text and a big calculator application featured prominently. Most of the information is conveyed through bullet points. On the other page, the information is conveyed in several brief paragraphs and the design is a little more austere, with a small calculator application featured at the bottom. Both pages use the same keyword, ‘wholesale groceries.’

Both pages are accessed from the site’s home page, but one has a ‘try this now’ button located in the top right corner, near some grabby introductory copy. The other can be accessed through a point on the navigation bar titled ‘cost calculation.’

As you have probably discerned, the two pages are essentially the same. They say the same things, convey the same information, but they are presented in different ways. The subtle differences all add up to make the pages look very different from each other. The traffic and conversions driven by each page will give you a good idea of which techniques work.

How to analyse the findings

This sort of test is a multivariate test, meaning that you’re testing several things at once. This means that it’s not going to pin down what works for your site in exact terms. It’s impossible to say that buttons will always be more attractive to your target users than a menu item, or that the mention of costs is more enticing than a solid call to action. This test won’t determine whether colourful pages are more attractive than simple, professional ones.

The solid results you will gain from this test is which page version attracts more traffic. This method allows you to test two paths to the same goal, to see which one is better for your target market. Once you have the results, you can choose to drop one of the pages, although the results can give you some indication of what works.

Testing is an important part of search engine optimisation, and you can talk about your options with our experts at SEO Consult. Testing doesn’t have to take too much time. A little creative thinking can get results and here at SEO Consult our search engine optimisation consultants are used to creative SEO campaigns and use their experience to get great results for all of our clients and websites under our care.

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