SEO Testing Review: My Experience and When To Use It

January 9, 2024 · 7 min · Travis Dailey

Tools have come and gone in the space of SEO Testing. But none have benefited me as much as SEO Testing. 

Perhaps, it’s because it sits on top of Google Search Console (which I love) or because it offers a suite of tools to choose from. 

But SEO Testing has been a go-to tool for my SEO analysis needs when working on my affiliate sites and with clients. 

Let’s jump into it. 

Powered by Google Search Console

If you’re not using Google Search Console, change that today. Create an account and submit your sitemap. It’s the best free tool offered by Google (now that they burned Universal Analytics to the ground).

Google Search Console is a powerhouse of data on your website including terms you rank for, click-through rates, and linking data. 

But, Google Search Console is not the most user-friendly tool. It’s improved over the years but it’s slow and clunky when you attempt to dig into the data.

What about Looker (forever known as Google Data Studio)

Looker or Google Data Studio is Google’s Business Intelligence tool. It’s free as well and has a direct integration with Google Search Console. 

Looker is a good workaround to the Google Search Console’s poor user interface. But similar to Google Search Console, Looker is slow (sometimes slower). 

And with Looker, you have to build and maintain the reports. You’re only a click away from a team member pushing the wrong button and screwing up a filter or view. Their permissions are getting better to safeguard from this but it’s still frustrating when your hard work can be erased with ease.

(It’s an issue I have with Notion too. But that’s for a different day.)

This is a big reason why I recommend SEO Testing.

Why SEO Testing earns a spot on the tool list

They’ve built the tools, reports, etc. for you. No building or replicating reports. No worrying about someone toggling a filter incorrectly. 

That’s the beautiful thing about custom software. It does one thing extraordinary. 

And SEO Testing does SEO testing (along with analysis) extraordinary.

Before I share my favorite tools in SEO Testing, I thought I’d share a couple of unique features they offer that I use frequently with my clients and affiliate sites.

• SEO Split Tests
• Striking Distance Keywords

SEO Split Tests

I’ve used numerous tools that attempted SEO split testing. While no one offers an actual SEO split test, SEO Testing has been the closest in my opinion. 

SEO Testing does this by comparing a control group for several days against a test group for the same number of days. It’s not apples to apples but it’s pretty dang close. And it’s often enough to inform a strategy or make an adjustment. 

Striking Distance Keywords

I’ve used this report for many years even before it had a name. I built a report using Google Search Console data before Data Studio was around. Then I moved it to Data Studio when it launched. And now I skip the setup and just use it in SEO Testing.

It’s my favorite tool. And yes, it’s slightly replicated in other tools like Ahrefs and Semrush. But the report in SEO Testing uses Google Search Console data which is more exact than what you’ll see in Ahrefs and Semrush.

It’s a simple report but it gets site owners and clients excited. The Striking Distance Keywords report shows you high-value keywords on pages 2 and 3. These are keywords the site is close to ranking for but not receiving any traffic from. Sometimes these keywords are just a couple of tweaks or backlinks away from driving traffic to a site. 

Now, on to my other favorites

These are my favorite features of SEO Testing and where I always direct clients (or my attention).

Content Decay

A couple of companies offer this feature and others will soon. The idea behind the feature is rock solid. It monitors your content and then notifies you when it starts to slip. 

As soon as you have a down week, SEO Testing flags it for review. From what I’ve noticed it’s weeks faster than waiting for a human to tie it together from an analytics tool. 

Occasionally, it’s a false positive due to a holiday or competing trend. But most of the time it’s an early indicator something is going on and the piece of content needs to be investigated.

Winners and Losers

This is a good report to hold yourself accountable. Are you winning keywords? And are you losing ground to competitors?

The Winners and Losers reports show you keywords you’re moving up the rankings for and the ones you’re losing positions on for the last 7 days. It’s a good snapshot of your site’s trend line. Are you moving up to the right? Or falling behind?

Custom Annotations

I love this feature! Before I’d have Google Sheets of changes made to a page along with the date. It was a pain to manage and then reflect to see if the change drove an improvement. 

Some of my changes were logged in the Google Analytics Annotations feature but when GA4 was announced, I altogether stopped (good thing I did because GA4 still does not support annotations). 

It’s a simple feature that allows you to overlay notes on changes made to the site or important events (e.g., site went down for 3 hours). Since the notes are visible by date in SEO Testing you can easily filter the reports to measure the impact of the change by comparing before and after dates.

What else is there

SEO Testing breaks their offerings into three cohorts: 

1. Testing
2. Reporting
3. Integrations

And above we only covered 5 of the two dozen features they offer. I use some more than others in specific accounts but they are all there if you need them. And with little to no setup. You connect your Google Search Console account at setup and your data is ready in the reports when you need it. 

Best for my business?

After using SEO Testing for several different businesses, I’ve separated their feature set into groups for:

• Affiliate/publishers
• Agency 
• In-house SEO/marketer

Affiliate/publishers

I’ve grouped affiliates and media publishers together as in my experience their desired outcomes are similar. 

They’re focused on output volume and protecting their rankings.

1. Content Decay
2. Striking Distance Keywords
3. Winners and Losers

Agency

Depends on the agency but the below three features have the most overlap between Technical SEO and SEO Content agencies.

1. Brand vs Non-brand
2. SEO Split Tests
3. Striking Distance Keywords

In-house SEO/marketer

In-house marketers are resource-constrained. They are focused on squeezing every drop of value out of the content they’ve produced.

1. Content Decay
2. Striking Distance Keywords
3. CTR Opportunities

Wrapping up

SEO Testing is an excellent tool for sites that rely on SEO traffic for their business. It’s one of the few tools I recommend clients purchase.

If you run an affiliate site, consult clients, or operate as an in-house contributor, give SEO Testing a try for 14 days free.