James Dooley: SEO testing. The importance of doing R&D split test experiments, in my opinion, is one of the most important ways of trying to stay ahead of the curve in the SEO community.

Today I'm joined with Mike Lovatt, Paul Truscott and Luke Bastin, and we're all part of a private WhatsApp group where we're continuously arguing, debating, trying to play devil’s advocate with each other and work out what actually works in today’s algorithms.

In my opinion, it is one of the most important things to do.

Mike Lovatt, 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, you're going nowhere.

If you go to a conference, they are not going to tell you something that is breaking news. It will be something they figured out years ago and are only now sharing with the wider community.

Whereas if you are in a small testing group, you're more likely to get secrets because you're probably not in the same niches.

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 becomes hugely important because if you want secrets from other people, you need to test things yourself too.

One thing I've been doing is using small subdomains with different country focuses to test one thing in isolation and see if it creates a positive increase.

You also need the patience to let those changes play out because Google baked into the algorithm years ago the idea of randomly dropping pages just to see if we panic and change things back.

James Dooley: The whole Google dance and random ranking fluctuations.

I completely agree. It is difficult for one person to test everything. Having that corroboration where you can bounce ideas around is important.

I also think every person in a testing group needs to be contributing. Otherwise you end up with people taking information without adding value.

Paul Truscott, what about yourself? Why is SEO testing important and why is the information at conferences often outdated?

Paul Truscott: Honestly, joining this group has been one of the most important things for me.

It is a group of people doing great work and because there is trust, people share openly.

You discover things you simply would not find on your own unless you had a huge team.

Even if you did have a big team, you're still limited by the ideas you personally come up with.

You do not want a group too big because leaks become inevitable. But the size of this group works because there is a core group constantly testing and sharing.

When you consume courses or conference talks, at best you are getting outdated information. At worst, you are getting complete nonsense that never worked anyway.

Once you start testing things properly with data analysis, most of what you see in the SEO space gets exposed for the garbage it is.

There is no substitute for testing and sharing ideas.

Reading patents and grounded information is important because it gives you starting points for ideas. But then you need to test whether it actually works.

Ninety percent of the ideas I test do not work.

You are basically panning for gold. You have to keep testing until you find something valuable.

Luke Bastin: One of the biggest values of split testing for me is from a persuasion perspective with enterprise clients.

If you need buy-in from multiple stakeholders inside a company, testing becomes incredibly valuable because you can present data and case studies.

You can say, “Here is the graph. Here is the result. Here is the revenue impact.”

That makes it much easier to secure budget and get things implemented.

Once you become the person bringing proven results, you build trust and get more done.

James Dooley: Exactly. We are constantly trying to challenge each other and retest things.

Sometimes I will get a positive result and Mike Lovatt will test the same thing in another niche or country and get a negative result.

Then we rerun the test because nuances matter. The country matters. The industry matters. YMYL niches behave differently.

Mike Lovatt, what are you working on right now that people can learn from?

Mike Lovatt: One thing I tested was geo-targeting through subdomains.

I had content ranking in places like Ireland and Canada even though it was not specifically localised.

Previously I used subfolders with hreflang tags, but I moved the content to subdomains instead.

Then I thought because AI translation is now so good, I could simply translate content into Spanish and launch it on a Spanish subdomain.

What was interesting was the Canadian and Irish content ranked really well, but the Spanish content did not.

It almost felt like Google already understood my site as an English-speaking brand.

Because the UK and Ireland have similar demographics, Google was more willing to trust the site there.

Trying to suddenly become a Spanish brand overnight did not work the same way.

That was a huge eye-opener.

James Dooley: What about you, Paul Truscott?

Paul Truscott: Probably my biggest discovery in local SEO has been task fulfilment on transactional pages.

I use a modified version of Cory’s attributes, prominence and popularity framework, but I apply it through the lens of task fulfilment.

I structure pages around what the user needs to know next to make a buying decision.

That has worked incredibly well for rankings and click-through rates because it satisfies the user intent.

One thing that has worked really well is using SERP filter chips as guidance.

For example, if Google shows things like “top rated”, I know reviews matter.

So I add jump links at the top of the page on mobile so users can instantly access reviews, pricing or whatever they care about most.

I want users to have everything they need above the fold on mobile.

That has been my biggest SEO breakthrough over the last year.

Google is becoming much smarter about whether you actually fulfil the intent behind the search.

Luke Bastin: One of my biggest discoveries came from mistakes.

I started testing the extent to which search engines use schema in snippets to replace meta descriptions and titles.

What I discovered is that LLMs pick up a huge amount of information from search snippets.

FAQ schema, for example, often gets pulled directly into search engine snippets, and then those snippets feed into LLM fan-out queries.

I accidentally found a broken page where the JavaScript failed to render properly, but the FAQ schema loaded first.

The page was essentially blank, yet the schema information still showed up in LLMs.

That showed me how powerful schema and structured data can be for AI visibility.

James Dooley: That is what I love most about these groups. Someone says one thing and it sparks a completely different idea for somebody else.

You often do not know what to test until someone gives you a new perspective.

Some of the best findings come from randomly discovering something ranking unexpectedly and reverse engineering why.

Paul Truscott: This very podcast is a good example of that process. Somebody says something and it sparks another idea.

That then becomes another test and eventually another discovery.

James Dooley: Anyone watching this, if there is something you want tested and it is too costly to do yourself, feel free to reach out.

Paul Truscott, what is the best way for someone to contact you?

Paul Truscott: Best way is my personal email because I only do lead generation and not client SEO.

People can contact me at paulrascot@hotmail.com
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James Dooley: Luke Bastin, what about yourself?

Luke Bastin: LinkedIn is probably the best place, or hello@lukebaston.com
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James Dooley: Mike Lovatt?

Mike Lovatt: Either Twitter under my name or mikelo.com.

James Dooley: Mike Lovatt, what kind of testing are you most interested in right now?

Mike Lovatt: Schema and third-party corroboration.

Any external sources of truth across different mediums and platforms.

James Dooley: Perfect.

SEO testing is incredibly important. We are always happy to test ideas and share results internally.

One caveat is that anything tested will also be discussed within the private group, so keep that in mind.

Mike Lovatt, Paul Truscott and Luke Bastin, it has been an absolute pleasure discussing SEO testing and split testing strategies that are working in today’s algorithms.