SEO Testing and R&D Split Experiments | James Dooley Interviews Panel

James Dooley: SEO testing. The importance of doing R&D, split tests and experiments, in my opinion, is one of the most important ways to stay ahead of the curve in the SEO community. Today I'm joined by Mike Lovatt, Paul Truscott and Luke Bastin, and we're all part of a private WhatsApp group where we're continuously arguing, debating, playing devil's advocate with each other, and working out what actually works in today's algorithms. In my opinion, I think it is one of the most important things to do. But Mike, why do you think SEO testing and being part of a group where you can share results is important for SEO? Mike Lovatt: You always need to have an edge. You always want to be top of Google. If you're just sitting there doing nothing, then you're going nowhere. If you go to a conference or something like that, they're not going to tell you something that is absolutely breaking news. It is going to be something they figured out a couple of years ago, and only now are they sharing it with the wider community. Whereas, if you're in a small testing group, you're more likely to get secrets because you're probably not in the same niches. You know what is working. There are only so many things you can test at once yourself because you need to test things in isolation. By being part of a small group, it is hugely important that if you want to get some secrets from other people, you have to test things for yourself. One thing I was doing was testing on small subdomains with different country focuses. People work with clients and their own big brands, and they do not want to go and make a huge change to a site all at once. I have some small subdomains with different country focuses where I test one thing at a time and see if it results in a positive increase. You also need the patience to wait and see those changes play out because Google baked it into the algorithm years ago to catch SEOs out. Sometimes they drop a page for no reason just to see if we panic and change it back straight away. James Dooley: The whole random ranking factors and the Google Dance that people talk about. I completely agree with what you're saying, Mike. It is difficult for one person to test everything, and having that corroboration where you can bounce ideas off each other is important. I also think it is really important that every person in the group is actively doing split tests. Sometimes you can end up with leeches within a group who sit back, take all the information and do not push boundaries or provide value for others. Paul, what about yourself? Why is SEO split testing important? Why do you not get the real knowledge at SEO conferences, and why does it feel like outdated information compared to what is working in today's algorithms? You are part of our group. Do you enjoy bouncing ideas off each other? Paul Truscott: I'm not just saying this because we're recording, but joining that group has probably been the most important thing for me over the last year and a half. It is a group of great people doing great work. When you share openly like that, because you trust one another and know the information stays within the group, you discover things you otherwise would not discover on your own unless you had a very large team. Even with a large team, you are limited by the ideas you can come up with yourself. In a group, you do not want it too big because then you inevitably get leaks. I think what you've created is a really good size because there is a core group of people with strong ideas who actively test and share what they are finding. It is really important because when you go to conferences, buy courses or consume online content, you are usually getting outdated ideas. At worst, you are getting complete nonsense that never worked in the first place. Most of what I encounter in the SEO space is nonsense. Once you start testing and analysing data, most of what you see gets exposed for the garbage that it is. There is no substitute for testing and sharing ideas because it is the only way you can properly validate things. Reading patents and information grounded in some truth is important because it gives you ideas, but then you have to go away and test whether it actually works. I would say 90% or more of the ideas I come up with do not work. They have no utility or value. You have to keep testing to find those nuggets that do work. It is like mining for gold. If you just listen to everyone else about where the gold is, they are probably not going to show you where it actually is. You have to go and find it yourself. James Dooley: For sure. Luke, is there anything you think we have missed? Luke Bastin: One of the biggest values I see in split testing is from a persuasion and stakeholder management perspective, especially when you have enterprise clients. Sometimes you need to convince three or four different people within the same organisation to get things approved. Testing becomes really important because you are bringing them a case study and a data-backed narrative explaining why something should be done. Sometimes you need budget approval, and that means another team does not get that budget because it is a zero-sum game. If you can go to them and say, “Here is the data going back to 2024. Here are the graphs. Here is what we did. Here is how we know it works. Here is the financial impact,” then it becomes much easier to get buy-in. Your relationships with clients and stakeholders become much stronger because you become the person who gets results. The only reason you become that person is because you secured the buy-in needed to implement the work in the first place. From a sales perspective, split testing is incredibly valuable.