Ecommerce SEO Testing: What is it? And why is it needed?

Ecommerce is getting more competitive each day. Brands are fighting for visibility in the SERPs to capture traffic and sales.

But which SEO strategies work best for your site? To find out, you have to conduct SEO tests and measure the results.

SEO testing removes the guesswork and provides proof of what works for your specific ecommerce business.

What is Ecommerce SEO Testing?

Ecommerce SEO testing is the process of making changes to your website and measuring the impact on organic search performance.

These changes might impact:

• Rankings
• Traffic
• Click-Through Rate
• Conversions

The goal is to find tactics that improve your KPIs through evidence, not theory.

There are two methods of performing ecommerce SEO tests. Time-based testing and split testing. We will talk more about these later.

Ecommerce SEO testing differs from general SEO testing in a few ways:

• Scale considerations: Ecommerce sites often have thousands (or sometimes millions) of pages. This makes testing more complex.
• Revenue focus: Tests must connect to sales metrics. Not just traffic or rankings.
• Competitive insights: Tests reveal what works in your specific product categories against direct competitors.
• Seasonal factors: Ecommerce traffic patterns change with shopping seasons. This must be taken into account when analyzing test results.

A great SEO test for ecommerce includes these elements:

1. A clear hypothesis with expected outcomes.
2. Defined success metrics tied to business goals.
3. A big enough sample size for statistical significance.
4. Controls for external factors like seasonality.
5. Documentation of all changes made.

For example:

“We will change our H1 pattern from ‘[Brand] [Product Name]’ to ‘[Product Name] – [Key Benefit]’. This test will track average position, CTR, traffic, and conversion rate over eight weeks to determine if the new format improves performance.”

Why Conduct SEO Tests on Ecommerce Websites?

Ecommerce SEO testing can give you a competitive edge in several ways. It allows you to find what works for your specific site.

You can use test results to avoid costly mistakes. Tests allow you to clearly demonstrate SEO’s ROI. And you can use small-scale SEO tests to get buy-in for larger projects.

Find What Works for Your Website

No two ecommerce websites are the same. Even if they are in the same industry! What works for Amazon might not work for your store.

Your product mix, audience, and competitive landscape create a unique situation. SEO testing helps show you which tactics work for your specific circumstances.

Industry best practices offer a great starting point. But testing goes further. It shows what works in your niche and for your customers. This custom approach leads to better results than following generic advice.

The differences that make ecommerce SEO testing for your site include:

• Market position: Market leaders often benefit from different tactics than challengers.
• Site architecture: Your specific site structure affects how you should optimize content.
• User behavior: Your customers have unique search and purchase patterns.
• Technical constraints: Your CMS might have limitations that require creative solutions.
• Product lifecycle: Seasonal items need different strategies than evergreen products.

Avoid Costly Mistakes

Mistakes on ecommerce sites can be expensive. A sitewide change that hurts rankings can mean lost revenue across thousands of pages.

Testing helps avoid those costly changes.

For example, changing your product URL structure without testing might tank your rankings. A small test would have shown this risk before full implementation.

The cost of testing is small compared to the cost of recovering from mistakes.

Show ROI

SEO teams need to prove their value. Testing helps quantify the impact of your work in terms that management cares about:

• Traffic
• Conversions
• Revenue

With test data, you can show changes and their impact on your site. For example, you may change a title tag and increase that page’s CTR by 15%. This could result in 10,000 more monthly visits and an additional $50,000 in revenue.

It’s these concrete numbers that build trust and secure SEO more budget!

Get Buy-In for Large Projects

Big SEO changes need stakeholder approval. Test data makes your case stronger.

When executives can see proof from small tests, they are more likely to approve larger budgets for more work.

For example, you can test the impact that improving site speed has on your site. Start with a small section and show the conversion rate increase from that test. Then, you can use that increase to justify a bigger project to overhaul site speed for your entire site.

How SEO Testing Works for Ecommerce

When it comes to SEO testing for ecommerce sites, there are two types of tests. Time-based tests and split tests. These have their own pros and cons, but can both be incredibly useful!

Split Testing

Split testing compares two versions of content via a control group and a test group. The test measures results for both groups at the same time and then shows which group performs better.

For ecommerce, this could mean splitting similar PDPs or PLPs into groups. Just as an example.

This approach works well for elements like:

• Testing new page layouts.
• Testing structured data implementation.
• Testing a new hero banner.
• Using lifestyle images vs just using product images.

The process of setting up and running a split test will look like this:

• Forming a hypothesis.
• Finding the metrics you want to track.
• Splitting pages into a control group and a test group.
• Measuring data for your control and test group pre-test.
• Measuring data for your control and test group post-test.
• Analyzing the results to see which group performed better.

Time-Based Testing

Time-based testing compares page performance before and after changes.

Make changes, and then compare metrics to the previous period.

This method works well for changes to a single page. Or testing similar changes on a group of pages. For example, you could use a time-based test on a group of pages to establish whether longer product descriptions are better for SEO.

You can use time-based tests for changes like:

• Testing text changes.
• Testing internal link changes.
• Testing image changes.

Here is the process for setting up and running a time-based test:

• Forming a hypothesis.
• Identifying the metrics you want to track.
• Gathering data for a set time period before the change was implemented.
• Making the change.
• Gathering data for the same time period after the change has been made.
• Analyzing the results with some data visualization.

Key Considerations for Reliable SEO Tests

There are certain factors you have to consider when designing reliable SEO tests.

Sample Size

One important thing to remember is to ensure that you are testing on enough pages to see statistical significance. For some websites, this could mean testing on anywhere from 30 to 50 URLs per group. For others, it could be testing on 100 URLs per group.

This is something SEOTesting’s split test URL configurator can help with. You can select the subfolder you want to test on and determine the maximum number of URLs you want in each group, and the tool will give you a control and test group with a similar number of clicks to ensure you are creating accurate groups:

You can also use the tool to give you feedback on existing groups you have created, or to split a list of URLs into a control and test group for you.

Test Run Length

Most ecommerce SEO tests will need four to six weeks to run. This could be longer or shorter, depending on the number of clicks your test URLs get. The key is to ensure you are running tests long enough to see statistically significant results.

Variable Control

Try to keep external variables in check when running your ecommerce SEO tests. By this, we mean:

• Only testing one thing at a time.
• Keeping an eye on (or trying to limit) external link acquisition.
• Not creating new content for the duration of the tests.
• Monitoring new PPC campaigns that could impact organic CTR.
• Not changing any technical element of your site.
• Do not change any prices or promotional offers.

The key to a good ecommerce SEO test, or any SEO test for that matter, is uniformity. SEO changes constantly, so keeping any external variables as unchanged as possible will help create measurable test results.

Seasonality

Ecommerce is heavily impacted by seasonality. One of the best ways to ensure you are accounting for seasonality during an ecommerce SEO test is to perform a split test. This way, URLs in your control and test groups are both impacted by any seasonal performance changes.

Pages and Elements to Test on Ecommerce Websites

In this section, we want to break down some of the page and element types you can perform ecommerce SEO tests on. This can be anything from product pages to category pages. Or any sitewide elements like navigation structure and page speed.

Product Pages

Test your product page title tags. Try different formats. You can include just the product name. Or add a benefit or feature. Measure changes in click-through rate and rankings.

Experiment with your product descriptions. Test short versus long copy. Try changing the tone or format. You might see a lift in conversions or time on page.

Add review and price schema. Then test its impact on search impressions and clicks. Check if rich results appear. See how they affect traffic to those pages.

Test image alt text. Use different keyword variations. Track whether they help with image search visibility. You can also measure their effect on accessibility and SEO performance.

Category Pages

Try different layouts for your category pages. Test grid versus list views. Or experiment with how filters and product counts appear. Measure user engagement and click depth.

Test your category description copy. Try changing the length or keyword focus. Track how it affects rankings and pageviews. Make sure to measure bounce rate too.

Use internal linking tests. Link to best-selling or high-converting products. Test how those links affect click-through and page performance.

Test the presence and format of breadcrumbs. See if they improve crawl paths. Track their impact on indexed pages and site structure.

Change your H1 tag and subheadings. Test different keyword focuses. Try making them clearer or more benefit-driven. Then monitor ranking shifts and click data.

Freddie Chatt, an ecommerce SEO specialist, agrees with the importance of SEO testing on category pages. Here’s what he had to say:

“The category page is such a great page for SEO testing, being so important for ecommerce sites. And the results can differ by industry which is truly mind blowing. Try adding ‘best’ to your page titles (this one almost always wins) or adding ‘For Sale at BRAND’ to your page titles which is underrated. Some industries need 500+ words below the fold and yet some that actually harms performance.”

Sitewide Elements

Test changes to your main navigation. Add or remove top-level links. Rename categories. Track changes in crawl paths and user flow.

Experiment with different footer links. Include more internal links to key pages. Or simplify the footer. Measure how this affects crawl rate and link distribution.

Run mobile layout and page speed tests. Try reducing image sizes or using lazy loading. Measure speed scores and see if rankings or conversions improve.

Test which filters are indexable. Block some with noindex. Let others get crawled. Then monitor index bloat and traffic from filtered URLs.

Try different canonical tag setups. Point filters back to the main category. Or test self-referencing canonicals. Measure changes in crawl efficiency and duplicate content issues.

SEO Testing Tools for Ecommerce Websites

There are a range of SEO testing tools available to help you start the process of running ecommerce SEO tests.

Some of the below tools are paid, like SEOTesting, SearchPilot, and seoClarity. However, there are tools that you can use to perform SEO testing for free, like Google Search Console and Google Analytics.

SEOTesting

SEOTesting is an SEO testing tool that allows you to complete a wide array of SEO tests for your ecommerce website. These test types include:

• Single-page SEO tests.
• Group SEO tests.
• URL redirect tests.

These test types above are all time-based SEO tests, allowing you to monitor the changes in SEO performance once a change has been made.

SEOTesting also allows you to run SEO split tests, comparing the performance of a test group (that is changed) and a control group (that is left unchanged) to give you a better understanding of how a page change impacted performance.

The sheer number of test types available within SEOTesting makes it suitable for ecommerce businesses wanting to start SEO testing or improve on their in-house SEO testing.

One thing to note is that SEOTesting does not make changes for you on your website. You have to make these changes manually through your CMS or via your development team before setting up a test on SEOTesting.

seoClarity

seoClarity’s SEO Split Tester has been designed for enterprise use and advanced SEO testing at scale.

It is part of their automation suite and aims to make split testing faster and easier for teams.

You can use seoClarity’s Split Tester by splitting pages into control and variant groups, much like you can with SEOTesting’s split tests and SearchPilot’s test tools.

Again, like SearchPilot, seoClarity’s Split Tester will make the changes for you, which can help you save time. The trade-off is that the tool is more suited to bigger and more advanced operations.

Their Split Tester is an add-on to their ‘Core’ and ‘Professional’ pricing plans.

SearchPilot

SearchPilot is an enterprise SEO testing tool that places a specific focus on A/B testing for SEO.

The key difference between SearchPilot and SEOTesting is that SearchPilot will make the changes on your website within the tool itself. This can be a timesaver. SearchPilot also uses a ‘neural network algorithm’ to analyze changes for you. This can help you to analyze your results and come to conclusions slightly quicker.

There are some trade-offs to keep in mind though.

You will have to run your website traffic through SearchPilot’s Edge servers in order for their platform to run SEO tests for you. This makes the setup process slightly more complex for users who are just starting their SEO testing journey or less technically inclined.

Google Search Console & Google Analytics

You do not need paid tools to start running some ecommerce SEO tests. You can actually start by using our CMS’ built-in reporting capabilities and Google’s tools like Search Console and Google Analytics.

As we explained at the very start of this article, SEO testing is the process of changing your website and measuring the results.

If you do not have the budget to use tools like SEOTesting, SearchPilot, or seoClarity, you can get started for free with GSC and GA4.

Simply think of a test you would like to run and how long you want the test to run for. Then, you can take the data for the time before your test, make the change, and let the test run. You should get a good insight into how performance improved or declined based on the data within these tools.

The thing to keep in mind here is time.

Conducting SEO testing in this way takes a lot of time, as well as some data visualization skills. If you do not have the time to run these SEO tests manually, this is where a specialist SEO testing tool can be useful.

Real-World Examples of Ecommerce SEO Tests

To round off this article, we want to give examples of ecommerce SEO tests done in SEOTesting to show the impact you can have with some well-designed and executed tests.

Adding Additional Product Examples on Category Pages

An electronics site ran this test on laptop category pages. They added more product tiles lower on the page. These tiles showed other models not in the main grid. The idea was to show more variety and catch long-tail searches. Google indexed more product names and specs. As a result, the pages ranked for a wider set of keywords and got more clicks.

The chart shows a clear lift in click difference after the test started. The control and test groups had similar trends before. But the test group saw more clicks after launch. The gains held steady for several weeks.

Adding Structured Data to Product Pages

A skincare brand added structured data to all product pages. This included Product, Review, Price, and Availability schema. The change allowed rich results to show in Google. Their listings now had star ratings and price info. These features boosted visibility in the SERPs and increased click-through rates. This led to more traffic to the test pages.

This test had a big and fast increase in clicks after launch. The difference jumped within a few days. The improvement held steady through the test period.

Building-Out Category Pages

An online clothing retailer had thin category pages. Each page had a short introduction and a product grid. The SEO team added 300+ words of helpful copy to the top of each category page. This copy explained how to choose the right items in that category. They also added internal links to size guides and bestsellers. The goal was to give Google more content to crawl with the aim of boosting topical relevance.

This test shows a clear improvement after launch. The average click difference rose steadily and stayed high. This means the test group got more clicks than the control group after the changes.

New Product Page Design

An online shoe store redesigned its product pages. The new layout made prices more visible and showed reviews higher on the screen, rather than below the fold. They also made the product images bigger and ensured they loaded quicker. These changes improved user experience and made the pages more appealing in search. Google picked up on the improved layout and ranked them higher. More users clicked on the upgraded pages in search results.

This test shows a strong positive trend. Click difference rose quickly after the test started and stayed high. The change clearly improved performance.

Ecommerce SEO testing helps you make smart data-driven decisions. This article covered how to run both time-based and split tests. We explained the key elements of successful tests and showed real-world examples that led to more clicks and better results.

The next step is to start small. Pick one product or category page and test a simple change. Use a tool like SEOTesting to measure the results. Over time you will learn what works for your site and gain the proof you need to scale those changes with confidence.

Ready to stop guessing and start proving what works? SEOTesting makes it easy to run SEO tests on your ecommerce site. Set up split or time-based tests and get clear insights that drive real growth.

Start your free trial today and turn SEO ideas into revenue-winning results.