If you own an online business, or work in the world of search engine
optimization (SEO), then you probably know by now that SEO is not an
exact science. Unlike chemistry, there is no formula that guarantees
success. It does not suffice to mix the right ingredients together in
order to get a substance which will be the same every time. The web
changes, it changes a lot, and you need to constantly adapt to what is
happening out there. Very few people stick to a single system their
whole life, and instead the
successful marketers will constantly do experiments and
tests in order to see what works, and what no longer does. Here is a
list of 31 such experiments, things that were attempted, and whether
they turned out to be successful or not.
1. Plain text URLs with no link
The experiment: In this experiment, a group of marketers from the
academic sector noticed something fairly interesting in some of the web
sites and pages in university and college domains. A lot of the times,
when a scientific paper or other academic text would be produced, the
convention said that links would be spelled out, written out on the page
without having a link. For example, they would write http://example.com
instead of having a keyword with a link. So they wanted to know what
difference that made for search engines and for discovery.
The result: Unfortunately, the test yielded no positive result. It
seems like people were not going to the new URL in any more number than
if the plain text URL was not there. One thing they did note however is
that Google does discover plain text URLs even if they have no link
associated to the.
The source:
http://dejanseo.com.au/seo-experiment-with-non-link-references/
2. Google+ and Twitter influencing search results
The experiment: When Google introduced the real time search results,
it meant that suddenly, tweets were part of the results. That meant
anything someone would tweet out was now visible in search results. But
shortly after, the company deprecated that result. So do tweets still
influence search results? This experiment centered around a single tweet
linking to an unindexed URL.
What quickly became clear is that while Google appears to no longer
have access to the Twitter fire hose, there are enough scrappers and
aggregator sites that the tweet still makes it to the search results,
albeit a bit slower. But Google+ saw a much faster transition from
social to search, with these results showing up in minutes.
The result: There was no question from this experiment that both a
tweet and a Google+ post would influence search results, although
Google+ seems to have a much more immediate effect.
The source:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/do-tweets-still-effect-rankings
3. PageRank variation based on number of links
The experiment: The question here was whether or not the number of
outgoing links on an authoritative site affected how much gain one site
could get from a backlink, in terms of PageRank changes. So in order to
find out, the experiment used two brand new sites, and added a single
backlink on two popular sites. The first one was a site that had a
moderate number of links already, while the second site had thousands.
The purpose here was to see whether Google penalized backlinks on sites
that already had too many links.
The result: What this test showed is that there seemed to be no
impact on the number of existing backlinks present. Both sites ranked up
in a similar fashion, and remained that way for months.
The source:
http://dejanseo.com.au/pagerank-split-experiment/
4. High volume blogging experiment
The experiment: A small financial firm with an online site was
watching its traffic numbers being completely flat for months. One day
however, they received the necessary funds and goahead for an online
marketing campaign. What they wanted to test was whether using regular
posts, combined with social media, could increase their search traffic
in the long term. They blogged for 100 days in a row, taking Twitter
questions from their customers and making videos to drive traffic to
their site.
The result: Because their traffic numbers had been flat for so long,
they had a nice baseline to compare against. When they started blogging,
they right away saw their traffic numbers come up. But more than that,
they were able to track long tail keywords as well, showing that the
traffic was going up. There was no doubt that in this experiment, an
increase in content meant better SEO.
The source:
http://www.ryanhanley.com/results-small-business-seo-experiment/
5. Content hijacking
The experiment: As part of its algorithm, Google has a rule that
duplicate content will not be displayed in its results. This means that
if a second site copies a page from a first site, and posts it, then
that copy will not show up in Google. However, it is possible for the
second site to hijack that content, appearing in search results, and
making the legitimate site stop showing up. The way Google decides which
site will show up is whichever has the highest PR. So all the copying
site has to do is make sure they get more backlinks.
The result: The experiment showed that it is indeed possible for a
brand new site to hijack content away from a legitimate site. However,
there are some defenses that can help prevent this. One is by using the
canonical tag, and the other is by having a Google+ profile with an
authorship markup.
The source:
http://dejanseo.com.au/hijacked/
6. How uppercase letters affect SEO
The experiment: If you do a keyword search for a specific phrase and
try both lowercase and capital letters, you will quickly see that the
number of hits are different. This would indicate that Google does make a
distinction between lowercase and uppercase letters. So an experiment
was conducted to see whether capital letters would help a post rank
higher or not.
The result: The result showed that titles had no effect on the
ranking. Whether a post title was all lowercase or using capital
letters, the ranking speed was the same. So what accounts for the
difference in the amount of hits? It turns out that the URL does. If a
page name has capital letters, there will likely be more results than if
it is all lowercase. If this holds true for all niches, then whether or
not you use capital letters in your post’s URL would seem to matter.
The source:
http://www.mavenwebsites.com/do-capital-letters-affect-seo/
7. Value of the Google +1 button
The experiment: Last year, Google introduced their Search Plus My
World feature, which they said meant Google+ would be important for
search results. But what is the worth of a single +1 hit on your page?
If people click on that button, does it influence your ranking? The
experiment used brand new pages and tested whether clicking on the +1
button changed anything for their Google rankings. The result: The
result of a couple of +1 clicks was insignificant. There seemed to be no
difference in ranking, at least from a typical, anonymous user.
However, Google+ turned out to be important for other reasons. Whenever
someone likes your page on Google+, all of their friends suddenly see
that page come up on top. So the social part is very important to SEO.
The source:
http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/google-plus-seo-experiment/
8. Recovering from an update penalty
The experiment: If you have been working with SEO for a while, you
probably know about Google’s infamous updates, how the company
constantly revises its algorithm to try and remove spam sites. There was
the Panda update in particular that made a lot of legitimate sites lose
ranking. Sometimes, the reason behind this deranking can be hard to
find, but if you do find it, how hard it is to recover? By analyzing
data before and after such a change, a group of marketers watched their
analytics software to find out just how long it took for them to rise
back in PageRank.
The result: It turns out that recovering after such a penalty is hard
and it takes a while. But if you do fix the problem, it is possible to
recover your ranking completely. The experiment showed that you can come
back to the previous ranking that you used to have over time.
The source:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/recovering-from-the-penguin-update-a-true-story
9. Testing negative SEO techniques
The experiment: Online marketers are always quick to tell us how we
should stick with white hat techniques, always use methods that are
allowed by Google, and avoid using shortcuts which may seem appealing,
but apparently can cause our site to lose ranking if found out. But are
these warnings really true? Do negative SEO techniques lead to a loss of
rank? To test this, a site which ranked in 3rd position for a specific
keyword was taken and a lot of spam links were added. In total, 7,000
forum links, 45,000 blog comments and 4,000 sidebar links.
The result: While tracking the ranking, right away the experiment
showed a loss of ranking. Within less than a month, the site had taken
the 14th position for that same keyword.
The source:
http://www.tastyplacement.com/infographic-testing-negative-seo
10. Ranking a brand new site quickly
The experiment: With the Penguin update, Google has made it much
harder for smaller sites to rank. Instead, the algorithm focuses on
large authoritative sites with a lot of history and backlinks. So is it
still possible for a new site to rank quickly for a keyword? The
experiment followed a new site with a specific keyword, along with a
series of backlinks being placed on authoritative sites. The linking
strategy was to place not only the keyword itself but similar phrases as
well, and to spread those links on multiple sites.
The result: Less than two months after the experiment started, the
site managed to reach the 4th position for the keyword. This proves that
even after these updates, it is still possible for a small, brand new
site, to rank well when the proper SEO is used.
The source:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/postpenguin-anchor-text-case-study
11. Finding links to pages you do not own
The experiment: If you use SEO tools, many of them allow you to see
the number of links that go to remote pages. But using just Google
Webmaster Tools, you can only see data for your own web site. However,
an experiment showed that it is actually possible to view these links
for sites you do not own. All you need to do is take the page that you
want to analyze, and then copy its content on your own site. Google will
then merge the content and show you the links to both pages.
The result: Because your own duplicate has no inbound links, what you
are left with is a list of links to the other site. This is easy to do,
and takes just a few days for these links to populate in your own
interface.
The source:
http://dejanseo.com.au/mind-blowing-hack/
12. Non-informative title replacement
The experiment: When you build a web page, one of the most important
parts of the page is the title tag. We know that when the search results
appear, that title is the text which will be shown to the user as the
text for the link. But did you know that in some cases, Google can
replace that title? It is called non-informative titles. To test this, a
new page was created and the title was simply filled with keywords. Not
long after, a warning message appeared in the Google Webmaster Tools
saying that the title was non-informative.
The result: Searching for the name of the page, or rather what should
be the correct title, actually worked. And when the page was shown in
the results, the keywords were replaced by the name that the user looked
for, but that name was in brackets, to show that it had been replaced.
The source:
http://dejanseo.com.au/title-tag-replacement/
13. Do letter cases affect ranking?
The experiment: While it is known that whether a phrase is
capitalized or not may affect the number of hits that are returned, how
does it affect the results? The experiment here is to take a specific
key phrase, and create two pages, one with the words capitalized and the
other all in lowercase. Then, searches are conducted with both phrases.
The result: The results found is that both pages are findable with
either search queries. There is no visible difference in how the title
is capitalized.
The source:
http://www.mavenwebsites.com/do-capital-letters-affect-seo/
14. Social media likes
The experiment: This experiment deals on whether a like such as
someone clicking a Facebook like button, reshare, or +1, has an impact
on ranking. To test this, pages were created and then buttons were
clicked by various social media accounts. Then the results were checked
against the rankings of these pages before the social media blitz, to
see if those numbers changed.
The result: The pages did change in some cases. Social media does
have an impact on SEO, although it is a small impact. While that may
scale with multiple likes, even a single one can still affect a page’s
ranking in some cases.
The source:
http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/google-plus-seo-experiment/
15. Recovering after being deranked
The experiment: No one wants to see a Google update or a mistake they
did derank their site. This still happens a lot, and is something you
may want to plan for. But how easy is it to recover after being
deranked? This experiment tested whether the ranking can be fixed after a
site has lost considerable rankings for a specific keyword. After being
deranked by deliberately using spammy links, they were removed and an
appeal was submitted.
The result: After the appeal, it took many weeks for the site to
start gaining ranks again. But even though the process is slow, the
experiment showed that with good SEO, it is possible to gain your
position again.
The source:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/recovering-from-the-penguin-update-a-true-story
16. The hreflang and canonical tags
The experiment: The hreflang tag has been available for some time now
and is aimed at sites who have multiple domain names for multiple
countries, and may have duplicate content before of that, such as for
English UK and English US. Google allows you to use these tags to
specify these things do you do not get penalized for duplicate content.
The experiment used this tag, along with the canonical tag, to test
whether this indeed can improve your rankings.
The result: In the end, the results showed that both tags can indeed
be useful. Sites that were tested without the tags did worse than those
with. Also, by using both tags you increase your chances even more,
making them both useful.
The source:
http://www.stateofsearch.com/hreflang-canonical-test/
17. Influencing rankings with different anchor text
The experiment: The Penguin update from Google affected a lot of
sites, including those which may use a lot of links using the exact
keyword as the anchor text. So the experiment checked whether rankings
could be improved by using text that was slightly different. By using a
brand new sites, various backlinks were made, all of which with phrases
that relate to the main keyword.
The result: Ranking for that site actually went up from these
indirect anchor links. By using backlinks with words similar to the
keyword wanted, it did affect the ranking for the main keyword.
The source:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/postpenguin-anchor-text-case-study
18. Are Nofollow links really useless?
The experiment: When adding backlinks, one key concept that every SEO
marketer knows is that you should aim for normal links, not those with
the nofollow tag, because those are ignored by Google. But are those
links really useless for ranking? The experiment to verify this took
several new sites, and started adding nofollow links over a five week
period.
The result: Amazingly enough, over that period, the ranking was seen
as increasing proportionally with the number of backlinks. Even though
they all had the nofollow tag, and most likely played a much smaller
role than real backlinks, they did influence the ranking of the sites.
The source:
http://www.socialseo.com/blog/an-experiment-nofollow-links-do-pass-value-andrankings-in-google.html
19. Google Image Search analysis
The experiment: When dealing with Google Search, but few people spend
a lot of time investigating Google Image Search. In this experiment, a
brand new folder was shared on a site with a number of images in
numerical order, all of which simply showed their file name in the
image. After the crawler found the images, Google Image Search was used
to see in which order they would be shown.
The result: Interestingly enough, the images did not show up in
alphabetical order, or even order of being discovered. Instead, at every
search, it seemed like the images would be in a random order. It seems
like either the Google servers retrieved the results randomly based on
network latency between the various servers, or Google uses a deliberate
randomizer function to do this.
The source:
http://dejanseo.com.au/seo-experiment-google-image-search/
20. The Google Disavow tool
The experiment: One of the worse message to get from Google is the
warning that tells you too many spammy links are pointing to your site.
This means your site is now delisted or penalized. Thankfully, the
company introduced the Disavow tool in cases where you do not control
these backlinks. The experiment looked at whether this tool was useful
to disavow thousands of bad links.
The result: In the end, 96% of the bad links were successfully
removed using the link, which makes it a lot faster and more efficient
than simply trying to remove them manually. After an appeal, the site
was then reinstated.
The source:
http://cyrusshepard.com/penalty-lifted/
21. Anchor text proximity
The experiment: The way the anchor text is set up will impact your
ranking, but what about the surrounding elements? Would a page get
better rankings if you place links within a paragraph of text, next to
an image, or by itself on a blank page? The experiment took several new
domains and added backlinks with these various options.
The result: From looking at the different rankings, all for exactly
the same keyword but with different links, it does seem like anchor text
proximity matters. Those links by themselves ranked poorly, while links
as part of text ranked better, and image tags ranked best.
The source:
http://dejanseo.com.au/anchor-text-proximity-experiment/
22. Using canonical tricks
The experiment: The canonical tag is useful to specify which site is
genuine, and which may be a duplicate. But can the canonical tag be used
for other things? This experiment looked at what happens if the tag is
used for non-existing pages, or if it is used at the wrong location in
the page, such as within the body.
The result: Canonical does have a significant impact, but it has to
be used correctly. It should be inside of the head tag and point to a
valid page. Google did not trust a tag pointing to a fake page, or if it
was added as part of a comment, social button or otherwise outside of
the head area.
The source:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-extreme-canonical-tricks
23. The importance of emotions in keywords
The experiment: Trying to rank for common keywords like ‘SEO
copywriter’ can be impossibly difficult. But one particular blogger
decided to add some emotions to the task. Instead of focusing on just
those keywords, she also tries to add feelings like ‘best’ and ‘worse’
to her blog posts, in order to try and help rank for the main keyword.
The result: Amazingly enough it worked, not only for ‘best SEO
copywriter’ but also ‘worse’ as well. Still, because most people would
typically look for the best one, it does not matter, and can prove to be
very useful.
The source:
http://loudcow.com.au/funny-seo-experiment-a-must-read-for-all-seo-copywritersin-da-world/
24. Finding and fixing broken links
The experiment: Since the latest Google update, a site map is
important to any site. Having broken links can be a problem, and should
be fixed. But finding and fixing these links can be a pain. So in order
to fix them, a plugin called Broken Link Checker for WordPress was used.
The result: This plugin found and fixed all of the broken link. The
result in ranking was minimal, and the site as a whole did not change
rank, however links to broken pages would no longer be accessible.
The source:
http://seoupdates.info/to-correct-broken-link-urls-and-image-urls/
25. Links in press releases
The experiment: Sending out press releases can be very important,
because they can be picked up by the media, and many people can view
your news items. But some people also add many links in those press
releases, while others say those do not count for ranking. The
experiment looked at two press releases to two pages which had no other
backlink, one with links and the other without.
The result: More than just traffic from users who saw the press
release, the results showed that Google rankings were affected by those
links.
The source:
http://www.seoconsult.com/seoblog/links-in-press-releases-dont-help-your-seothis-test-proves-they-do.html
26. Google counting only the first link to a site
The experiment: Rumors say that Google only count the very first link
to a site. This would mean that if a page has a backlink to your site,
there is no point in linking it again. Also, if the first link uses the
wrong keywords, then adding a second link with the right one is useless.
Worse, some think that adding more links can remove the usefulness of
the first one. To check this out, tests were conducted using an unranked
site and links using various keywords.
The result: The experiment showed that all links are used by Google.
Even if they are not bringing in a lot of ranking for the site, the
keywords are all used, and they all factor into the results.
The source:
http://www.seo-scientist.com/first-link-counted-rebunked.html
27. The country specific use of filters
The experiment: Google has a presence in almost every country, and
the site responds differently based on the country the user is in. But
does that apply to sites as well? An experiment was done to see if a
site could be filtered or penalized on a country basis. By using
nofollow links, a site was linked from an Israeli host.
The result: By looking at various analytics of the traffic, it
quickly became clear that some automatic filters are applied in a
country specific manner by Google. This applies not only to the .IL
Google site, but also google.com for visitors from an Israeli IP.
The source:
http://www.seo-scientist.com/anatomy-google-filter.html
28. Using phone numbers for local link building
The experiment: Building links is not very hard, all you need to do
is local sites that are in your particular niche. If you want to create
backlinks for an electronics store, then finding sites that talk about
electronics is trivial to do in Google. However, if you try to focus on
local marketing, this may be much harder. Thankfully, phone numbers are
unique by areas. The experiment was to take phone numbers of competing
businesses, then use them to find links in Google. Then, taking these
links, it would give a list of sites that offer backlinks to local
businesses.
The result: In this particular experiment, a series of sites were
found with backlinks to many of the competing stores. This allowed the
finding of local review sites, business listings, and so on.
The source:
http://ontolo.com/blog/phone-number-co-citation-analysis-local-link-builders
29. Cheap SEO versus expensive contracts
The experiment: As Google constantly adjusts its algorithms, some say
that the era of cheap SEO is over, and only large firms can handle this
new landscape. Without dedicated people to spend a lot of time on
building your backlinks and your SEO, you have no chance of ranking. To
test this, various sites were created and contracted out to various SEO
firms, to see whether the results would go along with the price.
The result: Just like in many other industries, it turns out that the
cost does not always equate to the quality of the work. Instead, the
results turned out to be more based on what was done than how much was
paid. Links remain the main activity which brings in traffic.
The source:
Part 1: http://www.talknbusiness.com/the-seo-experiment-part-1/
Part 2:
http://www.talknbusiness.com/seo-experiment-update/
30. How proper on-site SEO can increase search traffic
The experiment: Any site that grows too large is bound to start
having some issues which leaves it with less SEO power than it otherwise
would. For example, a site can have duplicate content, which can be
found with Google Webmaster Tools, proper indexing needs to be done as
well, which can be done by submitting a sitemap, and tags should content
keywords such as the title and various header tags.
The result: These changes were done on a popular news site, and
traffic increased by 30% as a result, showing that even well known,
popular sites can get a good boost in traffic if SEO methods are
constantly followed.
The source:
http://www.quicksprout.com/case-study-techcrunch/
31. Most tags are not seen by search engines
The experiment: It used to be that meta tags, along with all other
tags in a page, had to be filled with keywords. But now there is a sense
that most of those tags are not seen by search engines anymore, to
avoid exactly this type of tag stuffing. An experiment was made to see
which tag could influence rankings.
The result: For the most part, the important tags are the title,
headings, link anchors and ALT tags. Note that only Google see the ALT
tag, not Yahoo or Microsoft.
The source:
http://www.webproguide.com/articles/ALTer-Ego-which-HTML-tags-are-seen-bythe-search-engines/
Reference :- http://www.guardian.co.uk
EBriks Infotech :- SEO Company India SMO Company India PPC Company India
Address :- E-171,Sec-63 Noida(UP)-India-201301
You Find Me On :-
