ipopbb
Power Member
- Feb 24, 2008
- 626
- 855
I created a website with the purpose of reverse engineering the "Content Score" portion of Google's rank equation. The idea is that each page on the site would test the use of a keyword (that no one else on the planet would use) in a single test. Here is an example of a test:
Source for Code 14: Keywords in blockquote tags
I created pages like this for every HTML tag and attribute and other qualities like domain, sub-domain, document, url params, etc...
The idea is that I type my GloballyUnusedKeyword into Google and see how google ranks the single test pages to find out what is most important. As a control I did this twice... two GloballyUnusedKeywords. The results were the same in the two tests which suggests that the sort order is not random.
The 2 websites were submitted on different weeks via Google's addURL page. No other SEO was performed. No inbound links. This is just a test for the different ways to use a keyword in content. The results surprised me.
I hope you enjoy these findings as much as I did and please offer suggestions and ideas for more or better empirical methods and experiments. I plan to keep my keywords a secret because I dont want my work to get polluted by conversations.
The top 12
What startled me was that Title, domain, headings (H1-6 tags), document name weren't anywhere near the top of the list. That is totally contrary to just about all WH advice out there.
What also startled me was the placement of the index page in the results. The index page contains no references of the unique keyword. Domain and url keyword tests were submitted separately. So apparently link to pages that mention the keyword is the 6th best thing you can do with your content and is more important than on page link text, meta tags, and alt text.
I only provided the top 12 because they haven't changed ranking and appear to have "settled" into there spots. 13+ are still seeing movement daily. If and when they appear to settle I'll post an updated list.
This experiment is less than one month old. I'd imagine it is possible for things to change over time... If and when they do I'll update.
Source for Code 14: Keywords in blockquote tags
Code:
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<blockquote>GloballyUnusedKeyword</blockquote>
</body>
</html>I created pages like this for every HTML tag and attribute and other qualities like domain, sub-domain, document, url params, etc...
The idea is that I type my GloballyUnusedKeyword into Google and see how google ranks the single test pages to find out what is most important. As a control I did this twice... two GloballyUnusedKeywords. The results were the same in the two tests which suggests that the sort order is not random.
The 2 websites were submitted on different weeks via Google's addURL page. No other SEO was performed. No inbound links. This is just a test for the different ways to use a keyword in content. The results surprised me.
I hope you enjoy these findings as much as I did and please offer suggestions and ideas for more or better empirical methods and experiments. I plan to keep my keywords a secret because I dont want my work to get polluted by conversations.
The top 12
- Code 14: Keywords in blockquote tags
- Code 17: Keywords in address tags
- Code 7: Keywords in underline tags
- Code 46: Keywords in strike tags
- Code 11: Keywords in p tags
- Code index: A page that links to all tests
- Code 56: Keywords in a tag link text
- Code 53: Keywords in img alt text
- Code 37: Keywords in meta description
- Code 52: Keywords in HTML comments
- Code 39: Keywords in meta author
- Code 38: Keywords in meta keywords
What startled me was that Title, domain, headings (H1-6 tags), document name weren't anywhere near the top of the list. That is totally contrary to just about all WH advice out there.
What also startled me was the placement of the index page in the results. The index page contains no references of the unique keyword. Domain and url keyword tests were submitted separately. So apparently link to pages that mention the keyword is the 6th best thing you can do with your content and is more important than on page link text, meta tags, and alt text.
I only provided the top 12 because they haven't changed ranking and appear to have "settled" into there spots. 13+ are still seeing movement daily. If and when they appear to settle I'll post an updated list.
This experiment is less than one month old. I'd imagine it is possible for things to change over time... If and when they do I'll update.
