Growing Your SEO Team in 2026: Building a Dedicated SEO Testing Department

What if your SEO team stopped debating tactics and started validating them? RooLabs reveals how.

If you’re an agency owner or SEO team lead, this is the kind of insight that sharpens your edge.

RooLabs shows what happens when SEO stops relying on gut feel and starts running like a testing lab, where every idea is validated, every tactic is measured, and every win is scalable.

In this breakdown, you’ll learn how structured experimentation improves:

1. client results
2. strengthens your team’s decision-making
3. uncovers opportunities your competitors consistently miss

If you want clearer prioritisation, stronger buy-in, faster wins, and a future-proof approach to SEO in 2025, this is your playbook.

Key Takeaways:

• RooLabs replaces SEO guesswork with structured experimentation.

• Scroll depth is one of the most powerful user-behavior metrics to analyse.

• Impact vs effort helps prioritise tests that matter.

• Validation is strict — wins are challenged before being scaled.

• Client risk appetite shapes which tests run first.

• User behavior and UX signals are becoming core to modern SEO.

• Multimodal search (video, images, structured content) is reshaping SEO tactics.

• The strongest SEO strategies now combine content, UX, and testing.

The SEO Experiments No One Else Is Talking About: Inside RooLabs With Celeste González

Most SEOs talk about testing.
Very few actually test.

And almost none have a dedicated SEO testing department running experiments, validating ideas, tearing apart results, and using user-behavior data as a core ranking signal.

That’s exactly why RooLabs, the testing division inside Rickety Roo, has become one of the most interesting SEO teams to watch in 2025.

In a recent SEO Leadership session, we sat down with Celeste González, Director of RooLabs, to unpack how she built the department, the frameworks her team uses, the metrics SEOs consistently overlook, and what future-proof SEO looks like in a multimodal, AI-driven landscape.

If you’re an SEO strategist, agency owner, or someone tired of intuition-led SEO, this breakdown will change how you think about experimentation.

How RooLabs Started: From Idea to Dedicated SEO Testing Department

Before Celeste joined Rickety Roo, “RooLabs” was just a concept. Founder Blake Denman always envisioned a testing division, but timing wasn’t right.

Celeste heard the idea in a team meeting and immediately volunteered to lead it.

RooLabs didn’t become a department overnight. Early on, Celeste was still juggling account management, client calls, strategy, and her first experimental tests. The biggest hurdle was buy-in, getting clients to trust a process that didn’t yet exist.

As tests succeeded and reporting matured, RooLabs gained momentum. Today, Celeste:

• collaborates across SEO, content, dev, and social

• jumps into client meetings to pitch testing

• maintains an evolving idea bank

• runs validation frameworks

• trains the wider team on successful experiments

It’s become a strategic engine inside the agency.

The Most Overlooked SEO Signal: Scroll Depth

If there’s one thing Celeste wants SEOs to pay attention to, it’s this:

“Scroll depth is probably the biggest thing I look at.”

User-behavior data sits at the heart of RooLabs experimentation. Tools like Microsoft Clarity, Hotjar, and Crazy Egg reveal what keyword tools can’t:

• how far users scroll

• where they stop paying attention

• which sections are ignored

• how mobile vs desktop users behave

• whether CTAs even get seen

The findings are often shocking:

• Many users never make it past the fold.

• Core content is frequently buried too low.

• High-ranking pages get terrible engagement.

• Mobile visitors behave entirely differently.

As Celeste explains:

“You can write a great piece of content, but if people aren’t scrolling, it’s not useful.”

This is where testing becomes powerful. Adjusting layout, visuals, CTAs, or embedding video often moves engagement more than another 300 words of copy ever will.

How RooLabs Decides What to Test: Impact vs Effort

With endless testing possibilities, prioritisation is everything.
RooLabs uses a simple but effective model:

Impact vs Effort + Client Risk Appetite

Every idea is evaluated based on:

• Effort — dev time, design work, content rewrites

• Impact — potential for ranking or conversion movement

• Client risk profile — bold, moderate, or cautious

For risk-averse clients, RooLabs starts small.

For long-term clients with trust built? Bigger, higher-impact tests get the green light.

This prevents chaos and ensures experiments match client reality.

How RooLabs Validates Tests (Before Claiming a Win)

One of the biggest issues in SEO testing is false positives.
RooLabs has a fix for that:

“I send the report to my team and say, tear it apart.”

Before scaling an experiment across multiple accounts, Celeste evaluates:

• all external factors

• seasonality and algorithm shifts

• site changes

• content updates

• UX differences

• potential tracking anomalies

Only tests that survive internal scrutiny get replicated.

This creates a higher standard for what “works” — and eliminates guesswork.

Scaling Insights: How RooLabs Trains the Team

Testing isn’t useful unless it spreads. RooLabs ensures institutional knowledge through:

• weekly account manager syncs

• Slack updates documenting new findings

• monthly idea-bank reviews

• cross-department collaboration

• on-call support when account managers pitch tests

This keeps the entire agency aligned and consistent.

Why SEO Agencies Need a Testing Function

Not every agency can spin up a full RooLabs department, but every agency can adopt its mindset. Testing teams solve critical problems:

1. When standard SEO is already “done”

Mature sites need innovation, not more keyword research.

2. When clients want revenue, not rankings

User behavior connects SEO to conversions more directly than traditional metrics.

3. When agencies hit plateaus

Testing uncovers new strategy layers, even on sites with years of SEO behind them.

4. When differentiation matters

Agencies that test consistently outperform those that guess.

How Long RooLabs Runs a Test Before Adjusting It

If a test doesn’t show results, they don’t scrap it immediately.

Instead, they:

1. diagnose potential blockers

2. review with internal experts

3. modify the test

4. run a variation

Tests rarely fail, they just need refinement.

What SEOs Should Pay Attention To in 2026 and Beyond

Celeste’s forward-looking insights are clear:

Multimodal Search

SEO is no longer text-first. Google and AI surfaces blend:

• images

• videos

• structured data

• social content

Embedded Media

YouTube and TikTok video testing is becoming a critical layer.

User Behavior as a Core Signal

Not officially confirmed, but in practice?
User engagement heavily correlates with SEO uplift.

Full-Funnel SEO

SEOs must work with social, content, design, and dev teams.
Testing is no longer an isolated discipline.

Final Word: The Future of SEO is Experimental

This conversation with Celeste González shows a clear shift:

The agencies that win in 2025-2026 will not be the ones producing more content.

They’ll be the ones producing more insights.

Testing.
Learning.
Iterating.
Validating.

RooLabs is proof that SEO’s next chapter belongs to practitioners who treat SEO like a science, not a checklist.

FAQs

What is RooLabs?

RooLabs is Rickety Roo’s dedicated SEO testing division led by Celeste González. It focuses on experimentation, user-behavior insights, and validating SEO tactics before they are scaled across clients.

Why is scroll depth such an important metric?

Scroll depth reveals how much of a page users actually consume. A page can rank well but fail to drive conversions if users never reach key content or CTAs. RooLabs uses scroll depth to guide layout, content, and UX tests.

How do you know if an SEO test “worked”?

RooLabs evaluates multiple signals, not just rankings. They look at user behavior, scroll depth, conversions, click-throughs, and engagement differences between mobile and desktop. The team then pressure-tests results internally before calling it a win.

How long should an SEO test run?

It depends on traffic and volatility, but RooLabs’ approach is:
Run long enough to see clear patterns, then refine rather than immediately scrapping. If a test fails, they adjust variables and run a variation.

Do SEO tests get outdated as algorithms change?

Some do, but RooLabs builds tests around long-term principles like user behavior, UX patterns, and content engagement, signals that remain valuable even as search evolves.

What types of tests does RooLabs run?

Their experiments include:

• content layout changes

• CTA and design placement

• user-behavior-driven optimisations

• embedded video tests (YouTube vs TikTok)

• UX adjustments

• scroll-depth and heatmap-based tweaks

• conversion-focused changes for local and e-commerce sites

How do you get client buy-in for SEO testing?

Start with low-effort, low-risk tests. Show results. Build trust. As clients see wins, they become more open to bigger or more experimental ideas.

How can agencies build their own testing department?

Follow RooLabs’ framework:

1. Start with one dedicated person

2. Create an idea bank

3. Prioritise through impact vs effort

4. Validate results internally

5. Scale only what works

6. Document learnings and train the team

RooLabs is Rickety Roo’s dedicated SEO testing division led by Celeste González. It focuses on experimentation, user-behavior insights, and validating SEO tactics before they are scaled across clients.

Scroll depth reveals how much of a page users actually consume. A page can rank well but fail to drive conversions if users never reach key content or CTAs. RooLabs uses scroll depth to guide layout, content, and UX tests. RooLabs evaluates multiple signals, not just rankings. They look at user behavior, scroll depth, conversions, click-throughs, and engagement differences between mobile and desktop. The team then pressure-tests results internally before calling it a win. It depends on traffic and volatility, but RooLabs’ approach is:
Run long enough to see clear patterns, then refine rather than immediately scrapping. If a test fails, they adjust variables and run a variation. Some do, but RooLabs builds tests around long-term principles like user behavior, UX patterns, and content engagement, signals that remain valuable even as search evolves.

Their experiments include:

• content layout changes

• CTA and design placement

• user-behavior-driven optimisations

• embedded video tests (YouTube vs TikTok)

• UX adjustments

• scroll-depth and heatmap-based tweaks

• conversion-focused changes for local and e-commerce sites

Start with low-effort, low-risk tests. Show results. Build trust. As clients see wins, they become more open to bigger or more experimental ideas.

Follow RooLabs’ framework:

1. Start with one dedicated person

2. Create an idea bank

3. Prioritise through impact vs effort

4. Validate results internally

5. Scale only what works

6. Document learnings and train the team

About the Author

This article was written by a digital recruitment consultant specialising in SEO and performance marketing. With years of experience building SEO teams for global and UK-based brands, they provide insight into hiring models that align with business growth and accountability.

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