How Multivariate Testing and SEO Can Improve Your Business Success

Posted on the 10 February 2014 by Andykinsey @andykinsey

In today’s economic climate, finding ways to improve your business has become a key part of success, and given our rapid move into the digital age this means making improvements to your online presence such as your website. A business website can play a huge part in the overall success of the company these days, which is why this is one of the key areas to look at when it comes to making improvements.

There are a number of factors that can affect how successful, visible, accessible, and effective your website is and there are various methods you can use to make improvements that will enhance these qualities. One thing that most businesses are aware of is the need to implement effective SEO when it comes to their websites. Search Engine Optimization is a key part of increasing the visibility and ranking of your site, which in turn improves accessibility, traffic, conversion rates, sales, revenues, and overall success.

However, effective SEO alone may not be enough to enable you to achieve the level of success you want from your website, which is why you also need to ensure you look at other ways in which you can make improvements. When it comes to your SEO strategy, getting advice and assistance from a professional SEO company can be hugely beneficial.

How multivariate testing can help

Multivariate testing is a process by which you test a range of variables on your website in order to determine which groups of variables yield the most effective results in order to enable you to achieve your goal. Like SEO, carrying out this testing and implementing the necessary changes based on results can also help to improve factors such as increased traffic, higher conversion rates, improved profits, and greater success for your business.

When you carry out this type of testing you basically test a range of variables in batches to see which ones are the most effective in helping you to achieve your goals, whether the goal is to see an increase in traffic, get more likes from website visitors, get more email addresses or subscription sign ups, or any other goal relating to your site. It can also help you to ensure your site is more user friendly, which is a vital part of creating a successful business website.

Planning ahead

With both SEO and multivariate testing you need to do some forward planning in order to make the most of these solutions. Your key objectives will be to determine what you want to achieve, as this will then enable you or the professionals you hire to work out how best to get the desired results. However, you also need to look at factors such as which variables to test when it comes to your multivariate testing as well as when to carry out the tests.

That leads us to an important question – how do you perform multivariate testing? Well, the good news is that here at SEOAndy.com, we don’t just tell you what you should be doing & leave it at that! We’ll help answer that question…

How to Effectively Perform Multivariate Testing

In a digital world where online presence and social media have become increasingly important for businesses, making improvements in this area is a big part of improving success for businesses. Multivariate testing is one of a number of tools and methods used by businesses in what has become a challenging environment. This process is used to help make life easier for companies eager to make improvements to their website or other online platforms such as marketing campaigns and blogs. Without prior knowledge or what does and doesn’t work well, it is impossible for businesses to make effective improvements that will enable them to achieve their goals when it comes to their business success. With solutions such as multivariate testing, this process can be made easier and far more efficient.

Businesses can access plenty of tools and resources to help them with multivariate testing projects. Professional-grade options include Maxymiser multivariate testing tools and if you fancy getting your self arm deep in code Google Content Experiments API is another option. There are free tools available for personal and smaller-scale projects as well. This means that any business that wants to benefit from using this analytical tool can do so with ease and convenience, with access to valuable resources and advice. In order to truly benefit from performing these tests, however, you need to make sure you are aware of the basics when it comes to the steps you need to take. This includes:

Plan the process: Planning is a key part of successful multivariate testing, so you need to make sure you put everything into place ready for when you carry the tests out. This includes looking at the variables that you want to test on your site, thinking about how you will group your variables for testing in order to gain maximum effect, and sorting out when you will be performing the tests.

Preparation: Once you have made these decisions, you need to start preparing for the tests. You should get the different versions of the site prepared ready for testing, and depending on how many you have you may want to assign different teams to be responsible for each version. Also, make you do some preparation in terms of timing for your tests, ensuring that all versions will be tested on the same days and at the same times to ensure consistency and accuracy.

Analysis: Once your testing begins, you need to make sure you are ready to analyze the data so that you can work towards making necessary changes and improvements. You need to make sure you analyze the results properly in order to glean maximum benefit, and if you need help to do this you can access a range of tools online.

Implement changes: Once the analysis has been done, it is time to implement the changes. You need to look at the combination of variables that the most successful when it comes to achieving your goal, such as increasing traffic, boosting conversions, increasing subscriber levels, etc. You can then implement the necessary changes based on which variable grouping is the most effective.

In Summary…

When applied together, SEO techniques and multivariate testing will without fail have a positive impact on your business. Whatever your goals, be it increased conversions, more subscriptions or simply more visitors – by planning ahead, preparing well & implementing the necessary changes you can ensure that your business’s online presence is as effective and beneficial to the company as it can be.

Anything Else?
Recently Rand Fishkin from Moz spoke about AB testing in a white board friday, if you dig through the moz blog you will find many more blogs.

Original Content by SEO Andy @ How Multivariate Testing and SEO Can Improve Your Business Success