SEO marketing channel testing prior to release

[Meghan_Powers]

Does anyone have a good method for testing/QA for SEO traffic getting assigned to the right marketing channel when doing a new release of something? We have ways using our tracking codes of making sure that SEM and other paid digital channels go to the right marketing channel, but haven't quite cracked the nut on testing SEO PRIOR to the release.

[RobertBlakeley · Accepted solution]

I test lightly using a manual process. I go to our site through various search engines myself, under various scenarios, and look at the results in Workspace. To identify my traffic: 

1. My site has a registration component. I take my encrypted registration GUID from the Adobe debugger and which is captured in Workspace, and use that to create a visit based segment. I can then look at the results in the Marketing Channel reports.

2. Alternatively, I use a one-time tracking code and use that to create a visit based segment. I can then look at the results in the Marketing Channel reports. Depending on the scenario you are testing and your marketing channel set up, the tracking code can be set on the first, middle, or last page of the visit so as not to interfere with the capture of the search engine click through.

We have a report suite that captures just staff traffic so I, as staff, can test the Marketing Channel set up for that report suite before duplicating the set up in production.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

I will often use my browser Inspector / Elements panel to modify links on Google, or or various social media platforms, etc, to point to my Dev/QA sites (with all the appropriate campaign codes, or lack of for organic traffic), then click through those links.

Now I land on my Dev/QA site, with the proper referrers and campaigns. I can both check the post-processed data using the Adobe Debugger, but I can also wait about an hour and see the data in my Dev/QA suite.

Then I can do multiple tests to see the last touch updates, or not (in the case of direct traffic). I can also check different attributions and how the channels are interacting, all isolated within my testing suite,