Google’s continually changing their algorithm. So how do you continually increase your search engine rankings when they’re making all these adjustments? In this article, I’ll share a few tips on how to run SEO experiments.

The beautiful part about SEO is, you can make a change on your website, Google will pick it up within a few days to week. You can quickly see if the change is having an impact or if it’s actually hurting your rankings.

Similar to you, I learn about SEO on a regular basis. I learn these things through experimentation. I don’t know everything and no other SEO marketer knows everything out there either. Why? This is because algorithms continually change. For that reason you have to run experiments.

Here’s how:

1. One Change at a Time

The first thing that you need to know is when you’re running an experiment you should only do one major SEO change at a time. If you make five or ten changes, you won’t necessarily know what’s helping you or what’s hurting you.

2. Give it Time

The second thing you need to do is when you make a change you need to give it time. I give it roughly two to three weeks. So I take this change that I make, I then go into Google search console put in my url and have them fetch the URL, crawl and index it. That way Google’s picking it up right away. From there I wait a two to three weeks to see if the rankings are moving up or down.

If it doesn’t move down or if it stays flat, everything’s fine. It may be helping, it may not be helping, but at least you know it’s not hurting you. If it’s going up then great. Keep doing more of it.

3. Accept that Things May Go Wrong

The third thing you need to know is, a lot of your experiments will go wrong. So when you’re doing these experiments make sure you’re checking your Google Analytics every day. You’re looking at specifically the report that shows your search traffic.

If it’s going down, things are wrong and you need to revert the change right away. Go back into Google search console submit the URL and have them index it. That way you can bounce back. It usually takes a week or two.

To conclude, make one SEO change at a time, allow Google some time to index your change and monitor the changes like a hawk on Google Analytics. What successful SEO changes have you made to your website lately?