AB Testing - Organic Rank
-
Hello,
Currently We are running an A/B test on a few pages, the footer and the header on our site. I was wondering what is the proper way to do an a/b test so that our google rankings won’t fall and that Google will only index one version at this time?
Thanks
-
looks like the split testing is affecting our yahoo rankings. anyone experiencing the same issue?
-
Always split test with Google Website Optimiser as said above! The integration with Analytics is the cherry on the top for me!
-
OH! Sorry, I misunderstood. Solid way of doing this.
-
No, Page A is live and linked to internally. Page B is live both with no links, blocked by robots.txt file and has noindex tag. When I have my data on page A, I redirect it to page B and then remove the robots.txt block and noindex tag on page B. Page B begins blocked but ends up allowed and when it is allowed page A redirects to it so you never have two near identical versions of a page both live and indexable at once.
-
What happens is both end up blocked?
-
Yeah, I absolutely agree with Josh. Thumbs up, Josh!
-
Hi dMoon,
Cut right to the chase and use Google's own tools Try Google's Website Optimizer to handle your A/B tests. Everything will synch up with your analytics and provide a slick report in the dashboard.
Happy testing
-
Are you split testing with Google Website Optimizer or another tool?
-
When I do this I make two pages at two different URL's. I only show one of them at a time while the other has a noindex tag and is blocked by search engines. When I have gathered data on the first version, I redirect it to the other page which has the new header and footer. This way I only have one version of the page at a time in Google's index. When one comes out of hiding, the other is redirected to it so I never have two live indexed pages that are essentially the same.
Probably other ways to do this, but that's just my method.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Sale page ranking for "[blank] for sale" keywords
My company's Ecommerce site has a sale category that is currently out performing some of our normal categories in the SERPs for "[blank] for sale" keywords. For example the sale category landing page is ranking for the keyword "vegetable seeds for sale" rather than the vegetable seed category. Has anyone ever dealt with a similar situation to this? or does anyone have general advice for optimizing (or weakening) sale pages?
On-Page Optimization | | Scoleman1 -
Understanding why our new page doesn't rank. Internal link structure to blame? + understand canonical pages more.
Hi guys. Sorry it's an essay...BUT, i think a lot of you will find this an interesting question. This question is in 2 (related) parts, and I imagine it would be an 'advanced' SEO question. Hoping you guys can help bring some real insight 🙂 Always amazed at the quality for this forum/ community. **Context... ** We had a duplicate content issue caused by this page and it's product permutations, so we placed canonical tags on all the product permutations to solve it. Worked a treat. However, we now have more **product ranges. **We now sell Diaries, Notebooks & Music books, which are clearly different from one another. So...we've placed canonical tags on all the product permutations leading back to the 'parent' theme. In other words, all the diary permutations 'lead back' to the diary page. All the notebooks permutations 'lead back' to the main notebook page. So on and so forth. Make sense so far? Context end..... Issue. Amazingly our Diary page outranks our notebook pagefor the search term 'Design your own Notebook'. The notebook page is well optimised for this search term, and the diary page avoids the word 'notebook' altogether (so no keyword cannibalisation going on). Possible reason? Our Diary page has a vast amount of internal links to it throughout our site. The notebook page has only a few. Could this be the issue? If so, what reading/ blogs/ content/ tools would you recommend to help understand and solve this problem? i.e) Better understanding internal link structure for SEO. 2nd part of the question (in the context of internal linking for SEO). When there are internal links to a page with a conical tag does that 'count' towards the 'parent page', or simply towards that specific page? I really hope that makes sense. If it's clear as mud just shout. Isaac. EDIT: All pages in question have been indexed since we added these changes to the site.
On-Page Optimization | | isaac6630 -
Sudden Drop in Rankings/Traffic/Organic Impressions Without a Penalty
Hi Moz community! I have a question about a local client in Raleigh, NC - http://paragonbuildinggroup.com This client came to us from another agency who had previously not done such a great job with the design/development of the site, or with the marketing of it, so we are somewhat limited in terms of what we can do on design, user experience, etc. But, the SEO is all still easy to tweak and we've been working on it for some time now. As of July 5th, their keyword rankings have dropped dramatically (we're talking from first page rankings to nothing, according to Authority Labs), and they've fallen completely off the map in the SERPs. Their local listing doesn't appear in search results anymore, and WMT is showing a drastic drop in impressions (from 457 on July 3rd to 92 on July 5th). There have been no manual penalties on the site, no recent major development work done, and from what I can see, no signs of hacking and no bad backlinks. The only thing I can see is that Mozcast showed an 83 degree day with some clouds and rain on July 5th, the day that our rankings dropped off, but I can't find any documentation showing what might have changed. Any insight as to what might be going on? I'm completely stumped!
On-Page Optimization | | TriMarkDigital0 -
Proper way to change keywords without losing ranking
Hello Everyone, The website I am working with offers service in two locations, lets say Service in City A and Service in City B. Those two cities, which are close by, are the main source of clients, so the owner asked me to concentrate on these terms. I did a decent job for a newbie and now we are on the first page of google closer to the top for these 2 terms. The problem that I am facing right now is that a) it hard to get that extra bit from onsite optimization when you optimizing for 2 different cities b) Customers may get confused which cities we focus on A or B? We have locations in both. c) Owner wants to expand services to additional cities. So I looked at how our competitor handling these time of problem and most of them have a page with titles like "Cities we serve" with links to the individual locations that are optimized for the specific city. That page usually includes paragraph or two about local history and then re-span description of their services. Is it a good practice to structure one's website like that if you are trying to target multiple locations? Should I re-target my home page to something less geographically specific and create separate pages for Cities A , B and the new locations? Would I lose ranking for terms service in city A & service in city B because of that Or should I leave my home page optimized for Cities A & B and just add new locations as separate pages? Thanks in advance for you insights.
On-Page Optimization | | SirMax0 -
You notice rankings go up when..
you link out to wikipedia? I feel there are always benefits to linking out to authority sites like this
On-Page Optimization | | imageworks-2612900 -
Does 301 generate organic content ?
I manage this domain name www.jordanhundley.com . Right now it is 301 to www.jordanhundley.net where I hosted the content for almost 18 months. At this point you are only able to read the 301 script if you use CTRL U at the .com domain. Does Google read the content beyond the script? Is the 301 website getting juice from the targeted domain ? This is the script I´m using <html> <head> <title>Jordan Hundleytitle> head> <frameset rows="100%,*" border="0"> <frame src="[http://www.jordanhundley.net](view-source:http://www.jordanhundley.net/)" frameborder="0" /> frameset><noframes>noframes> html>
On-Page Optimization | | mPloria0 -
Homepage Hogging Too Many Keyword Ranks?
Hello: I've been the publisher and SEO for Indie Rock Cafe since starting it in 2007. It's done great, and has #1 - #5 positions in Google for many strong keywords like "best new albums", "best new bands", "top new bands", "popular indie rock songs", and so on. However, for many of the results, the homepage keeps popping up over and over again. I thought I'd done everything right to get other pages on the site to rank for top keywords. Another potential issue is that I expected the homepage to have a 6 PR by now, but it seems stuck on 5. Any ideas? Insight from SEOs and experts is always enlightening and helpful, so thank you in advance for your thoughts and advice.
On-Page Optimization | | holdtheonion0