A/B testing entire website VS Seo issues
-
I'm familar with A/B testing variations of a page but I'd like to A/B test a new designs version of a e-commerce site. I´m wondering about the best way to test with SEO concerns... this is what I´ve in mind right now, any suggestion?
- Use parameters to make version B different from A version.
- Redirect 50% of the users with 302 ( or javascript would be a better way?)
- Use noindex in the B pages.
- Use rel=canonical in the B pages pointing to A version.
- In the end use 301 redirect to all B pages to A urls.
PS: We can´t use subdomain and i don´t wanna use robots.txt file to protect the new design from competitors.
I´d love any suggestions and tips about it - thanks folks
-
My main experience with A/B is via Google Experiments and it looks like they highlight option 4:
To ensure that serving your variation pages does not have a negative impact on your site's SEO rankings, you can use the
rel="canonical"
link attribute on your variation pages.rel="canonical"
is a signal to search engines that the content of your variation pages is essentially the same as that of your original page, and that you would prefer that search engines index your original page rather than the variations you're using in your experiment.Source: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2613318
If you roll out rel=canonical correctly then this seems to be your safest bet in Google's eyes. My main experience is with split-testing single pages, but theoretically this should work out okay with the correct use of canonical. If you're really not sure you could roll out a mini-test with a couple of key pages first?
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
-
Keyword SEO
Hi everyone! I am pretty new to SEO so all the help would be great. Does every webpage on our website need a focus keyword for example like tructiepbongda Just to note that I am using Yoast on Wordpress. Many thanks,
Technical SEO | | yenu0 -
Content change within the same URL/Page (UX vs SEO)
Context: I'm asking my client to create city pages so he can present all of his appartements in that specific sector so i can have a page that ranks for "appartement for rent in +sector". The page will present a map with all the sector so the user can navigate and choose the sector he wants after he landed on the page. Question: The UX team is asking if we absolutly need to reload the sector page when the user is clicking the location on the map or if they can switch the content within the same page/url once the user is on the landing page. My concern: 1. Can this be analysed as duplicate content if Google can crawl within the javascript app or if Google only analyse his "first view" of the page. 2. Do you consider that it would be preferable to keep the "page change" so i'm increasing the number of page viewed ?
Technical SEO | | alexrbrg0 -
Crawl Issues / Partial Fetch Via Google
We recently launched a new site that doesn't have any ads, but in Webmaster Tools under "Fetch as Google" under the rendering of the page I see: Googlebot couldn't get all resources for this page. Here's a list: URL Type Reason Severity https://static.doubleclick.net/instream/ad_status.js Script Blocked Low robots.txt https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/id AJAX Blocked Low robots.txt Not sure where that would be coming from as we don't have any ads running on our site? Also, it's stating the the fetch is a "partial" fetch. Any insight is appreciated.
Technical SEO | | vikasnwu0 -
Reverify website
Hello, I want to disavow some really dodgy links and although the website is verifed since we see a meta tag in the source code, we no longer have the login details for the email address used to verify it so can't access the tools console. So how do I upload a disavow file (the links i got were from Ahref and Moz analysis)? Should I reverify the website using a new email address and upload a new meta tag? Is there a problem with doing this? Sorry if this is obvious!
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
Will combining multiple websites/brands into one Wordpress Multisite Installation hurt SEO?
My company currently operates four websites, independently of each other, a corporate website and three separate store brands. innovativemattresssolutions.com - corporate website mattressking.net sleepoutfitters.com mattresswarehouse.com All of our stores have the same branding, same TV spots, same print ads, etc across the company, we just swap out logos on all marketing pieces. It is proving nearly impossible for us to maintain four separate websites, currently on three different platforms. all four are hosted separately as of now. We would like to combine all four websites to one Wordpress Multisite installation so we can manage the pages from one place, using the same theme and even content in many places because all brands share the same info, policies, products, etc. We would set up wordpress multi using subfolders for installation and point the URL directly to resolve to the appropriate subfolder. The only site that would crosslink to the others would be the corporate website. Is this a bad idea for SEO? What other options would we have? Should we keep the corporate site on its own installation, but put the other three brands on a multisite install? Would duplicating content on the three brand pages be an issue? Less of an issue if they were not on multisite? Any insight is much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Karrie_Beth0 -
Expired Domain - http:// or www
I have an old domain - When i use the link explorer i get way more juice out of the www version of my domain. I will be using wordpress to set up a new domain with the same name . My question is - How do I make it proper for seo? Do i just change the http:// to www in wordpress and be done with it? Does it even matter (thinking it does)
Technical SEO | | imagatto20 -
Htaccess issue
I have some urls in my site due to a rating counter. These are like: domain.com/?score=4&rew=25
Technical SEO | | sesertin
domain.com/?score=1&rew=28
domain.com/?score=5&rew=95 These are all duplicate content to my homepage and I want to 301 redirect them there. I tried so far: RedirectMatch 301 /[a-z]score[a-z] http://domain.com
RedirectMatch 301 /.score. http://domain.com
RedirectMatch 301 /^score$.* http://domain.com
RedirectMatch 301 /.^score$.* http://domain.com
RedirectMatch 301 /[a-z]score[a-z] http://domain.com
RedirectMatch 301 score http://domain.com
RedirectMatch 301 /[.]score[.] http://domain.com
RedirectMatch 301 /[.]score[.] http://domain.com
RedirectMatch 301 /[a-z,0-9]score[a-z,0-9] http://domain.com
RedirectMatch 301 /[a-z,0-9,=,&]score[a-z,0-9,=,&] http://domain.com
RedirectMatch 301 /[a-z,0-9,=&?/.]score[a-z,0-9,=&] http://domain.com None of them works. Anybody? Solution? Would be very much appriciated0 -
Do you validate you websites?
Do you consider the guidelines from http://validator.w3.org/ when setting up a new website? As far as I know they don't influence rankings ... What is your opinion about that topix?
Technical SEO | | petrakraft0