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What you KNOW about SEO and can back up - not what you think

by Mike Anthony
23 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Misinformation in this part of the forums is getting to a critical level. In the last week I have seen people claiming nofollow links are definitely good for SEO, paid directories work, PR doesn't matter and on and on.

My point is not to debate those issues here. I just realized how absolutely confusing all those things must be to a newbie. This is a lively board with lots of opinions and thats not always a bad thing but sometimes you just want to KNOW what really works. What is based on solid evidence not just a personal alleged experience yada yada.

So I'd like your help in compiling a list of things that we KNOW about SEO - That is things that have been proven by tests or by Google confirming it themselves (lets face it they are the only ones that can say they know whats in their algorithm)

So I'll kick it off here again not with things that I think are right but with things that I KNOW are right because they can and have been proven. Proofs are now in bold and contain links to one source of the evidence for the position.

SEO FACTS THAT YOU CAN BANK ON

1) WE KNOW that content relevant to a keyword search helps rankings. We can see it in the results and even in the way that Google highlights the words of the search. We know that Google uses some for m of related words to judge content (they've spilled the beans several times)

2) WE KNOW that keywords matching in the title of a page, post and/or name of a website (showing on the page) helps ranking. (because the search result page on every search shows us the words that helped place it there - even denoting the words in bold)


3) We KNOW that backlinks from other sites helps to rank your page. Multiple tests done on this forum and elsewhere indicate that very few sites rank number one for a competitive term without any backlinks.

4) We KNOW that anchor text ( the words that are in the backlink to our sites) have an impact on search results for that term. (Google has confirmed this several times)

5) We know that for some reason many people have ranked higher on google after getting backlinks on High Pagerank pages even when the page they get the link on isn't that high. We've had several threads confirming this experience - see link in number three. Why is not yet proven.

6 ) We KNOW although SEO is not an exact science it most definitely is one. Search engines rank sites according to a mathematical algorithm calculated by a computer program (well known and obvious fact). It would be an exact science if the algorithm was fully known but elements of it are known and can be deduced from search results.


Might seem basic but believe me I regularly meet people new to SEO that don't fully understand at least one of those as is now obvious in posts in this thread.

I could and will go on but I'd like others to chime in on other things about SEO that have been proven . I don't mean for us to limit to only the basic things. I will update this post with any and every thing about SEO that can be actually proven or that has been proven. This is just a start. We can debate in other thread. If you can prove it then I will add it here.

Just looking for at least one recent thread where all the smoke gets cleared out and theres only real fire.
#back #seo
  • Profile picture of the author lee schmidt
    This post is flawed because you've given us 5 facts that we "know" to be true, but have offered no proof for them. The 5 facts you've given us are so basic that some people might think it's ridiculous to ask for proof...but unless you set the stage for exactly *how* to prove or disprove anything related to SEO, this will just become another thread filled with misinformation. Is something "proven" once *you* are sufficiently convinced that it's true? How can you really prove anything? And is there a point to this endeavor? The search engines are constantly changing, so most attempts to game them are futile.

    Just do what's in your users' best interests, that's really the only rule to play by.

    People try to treat SEO like its a science. It's not.

    You don't prove SEO. SEO proves you.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Originally Posted by lee schmidt View Post

      This post is flawed because you've given us 5 facts that we "know" to be true, but have offered no proof for them.
      Actually I did (but not for all) but just so you won't miss it they are now in bold.


      *how* to prove or disprove anything related to SEO, this will just become another thread filled with misinformation. Is something "proven" once *you* are sufficiently convinced that it's true?
      Fair enough. Like all things scientific when you test it, it turns out to be right repeatedly and the data can be verified independently by anyone who cares to look at it.

      Just do what's in your users' best interests, that's really the only rule to play by.

      People try to treat SEO like its a science. It's not.

      You don't prove SEO. SEO proves you.
      Sorry but thats the kind of worthless observation I am looking to avoid. What exactly is a newbie to get out of that? Anyway thanks. After reading your post I was able to add number 6.
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      • Profile picture of the author lee schmidt
        1) WE KNOW that content relevant to a keyword search helps rankings. We can see it in the results and even in the way that Google highlights the words of the search. We know that Google uses some for m of related words to judge content (they've spilled the beans several times)

        2) WE KNOW that keywords matching in the title of a page, post and/or name of a website (showing on the page) helps ranking. (because the search result page on every search shows us the words that helped place it there)


        3) We KNOW that backlinks from other sites helps to rank your page. Multiple tests done on this forum and elsewhere indicate that very few sites rank number one for a competitive term without any backlinks.

        4) We KNOW that anchor text ( the words that are in the backlink to our sites) have an impact on search results for that term. (Google has confirmed this several times)

        5) We know that for some reason many people have ranked higher on google after getting backlinks on High Pagerank pages even when the page they get the link on isn't that high. We've had several threads confirming this experience. Why is not yet proven.

        6 ) We KNOW although SEO is not an exact science it most definitely is one. Search engines rank sites according to a mathematical algorithm calculated by a computer program (well known and obvious fact). It would be an exact science if the algorithm was fully known but elements of it are known and can be deduced from search results.
        First of all, I think you missed my point. The earth is obviously flat. Google said so. That doesn't prove anything. Your bolded text above is nothing more than claims. Seemingly obvious facts are not inherently true. It doesn't matter if the claim in question came from you, me, your grandma, or even almighty GOOGLE. Google says whatever is in their best interest to say - not ours.

        Ok, let me give you something you might understand better...

        7) Google favors .org domains over .net and .com domains. If I were you I'd just say something like DUH OBVIOUSLY BECAUSE .ORG IS NON COMMERCIAL AND ALL and there, I have proved it to be true! If I wanted to offer some evidence I'd throw you this link Google Showing Bias Towards .org TLDs WHICH STILL DOES NOT PROVE ANYTHING. And even if it did, what happens when Google changes their algorithm?

        Get my point now? This thread is just going to be filled more more information that may or may not be true. The one thing that has certainly been proven, is that you have no idea what constitutes a proof.

        This thread = fail
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        • Profile picture of the author debra
          I can see it already...this thread is gonna be a pissin match.

          Which is one reason why I don't pay much attention to this side of the forum anymore. I prefer to stand uphill of any spray.

          Any who.....carry on :rolleyes:
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        • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
          Originally Posted by lee schmidt View Post

          First of all, I think you missed my point. .
          not really but you know what? What the hey. I will provide links to all the points so it will be even more valuable to a noob. But yes if the people who run the search engine says it works this way and what they are saying is consistent with the search results then yes that is proof.Classic evidential proof no matter how you misunderstand it.

          You didn't really make a good point though. Its like someone saying what do we know about the US. Well we know that Obama is the president. Oh wait you didn't prove that. Umm no I started with basics expecting a mature conversation. See, if there is a point that is in contention then we can help you out and give you links. Just let me know which one of the basics you have a problem with because I was upfront to state that to start out with I was listing basics and we could move on from there. That was just a kind of base to proceed from but I can break it down further.

          Just spare us the the thread=fail stuff. Whenever people trot that out they are usually young teens. We want to have an adult conversation here.
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          • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
            links to the evidence for the first positions all updated in the opening post.
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            • Profile picture of the author Lee Wilson
              The problem with these kinds of discussions is most of the people arguing would usually find they agree with each other if they could put the effort into having a discussion instead of taking one sentence and presuming a paragraph. This could actually be an interesting topic but probably won't get the chance.

              My personal opinion is that most of these things are easy enough to test for ourselves, there's no better proof for anything, even if it is only temporary proof in Google's case. Testing is easy but can be time consuming, so sharing insights instead of bickering before it even begins is madness.
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          • Profile picture of the author tjcocker
            Thread = win

            I'm 35 years old... Life shouldn't be so serious, but I'd also like to learn some things here. In all seriousness I agree with both of you on your points. There could be so many permutations in the algorithm that one thing will work solidly for one site, but not for another, and it won't be clear why.

            As for your first point, I think we also know that more content, generally related LSI content, will help for long-tail traffic and may also help you rank for your main keyword. An organic site about a topic would also have related topics being discussed.

            Point number 2 is dead on. I don't know the best formula, but you need your keyword at least once in your title, description, and URL for each page. Google shows them in bold, and very few sites rank in the top 10 without all 3. However I've seen exceptions, but that might just mean the competition is low. We can't know for sure, but we can draw reasonable conclusions.

            I personally think that Google is a wondrous mythical beast, like a Unicorn. Unable to be captured or fully understood, and if you touch it you will make a child's wish come true.
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            • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
              Originally Posted by tjcocker View Post

              I personally think that Google is a wondrous mythical beast, like a Unicorn. Unable to be captured or fully understood, and if you touch it you will make a child's wish come true.
              Umm Okay. LOL. I like it. We just need a WSO to show us how to find the Google Unicorn.
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  • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
    Lee, one hand i agree, on the other i dont.

    For example, feel free to prove that #1 is not correct. Try to rank a site with 100% irrelevant content to a subject where content has nothing to do with the keyword you are trying to rank.

    Possible? Actually i think it is (backlinks...)...but it's easier to rank the same site if it has relevant content, wouldn't you agree?
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonmorgan
    let's get this back on track shall we. it's a good topic and good topics are a good thing for all of us.

    1) WE KNOW that content relevant to a keyword search helps rankings. We can see it in the results and even in the way that Google highlights the words of the search. We know that Google uses some for m of related words to judge content (they've spilled the beans several times)
    2) WE KNOW that keywords matching in the title of a page, post and/or name of a website (showing on the page) helps ranking. (because the search result page on every search shows us the words that helped place it there - even denoting the words in bold)
    Agree.

    However, I don't believe that it's the actual content that is important but having your keywords and SEO elements in the right places.

    As far as I can tell, the SE bots are looking at key points on a page to determine it's content relevance. Having your keywords in the Title, H1-6 and somewhere in the content seem to be enough to do the trick. The rest of the content could be lorem Ipsum as far as the SE bots are concerned.

    Keyword density and the amount of text content don't appear to have as much of an impact as they once did.

    From my results, for pages that pick-up long-tail traffic and have few - no backlinks... a page with 200+ words is enough to convince google that the page has real content and is worthy of being included in search results. I haven't seen any results to suggest that having more text makes any difference except for the chance that the page could rank for additional long-tail keywords.

    3) We KNOW that backlinks from other sites helps to rank your page. Multiple tests done on this forum and elsewhere indicate that very few sites rank number one for a competitive term without any backlinks.
    No argument from me on this.

    4) We KNOW that anchor text ( the words that are in the backlink to our sites) have an impact on search results for that term. (Google has confirmed this several times)
    Agree.

    But I don't believe you need 100% anchor text to rank for a keyword.

    From studying many sites that rank well for certain keywords and looking over their anchor text I've seen many cases where these sites may only have 25% of the anchor text matching the keywords the site is ranking for.

    I don't know what the connection is but I do think there is a connection between keyworded anchor text, on-site SEO and site authority. Google looks at all of these criteria when determining a sites ranking.

    A site with a lot of authority doesn't need as much keyworded anchor text or on-site SEO (amazon/youtube) but a site with low authority (many of our sites) needs an extra does of keyworded anchor text and SEO to compensate.

    5) We know that for some reason many people have ranked higher on google after getting backlinks on High Pagerank pages even when the page they get the link on isn't that high. We've had several threads confirming this experience - see link in number three. Why is not yet proven.
    I'm still on the fence on if the Pagerank of the domain has much of an effect on the value of a backlink on a PR n/a page. I'm not sure if anyone has run an experiment on low vs. high PR domains.

    A definite benefit of a high pagerank domain is that the page with the backlink could develop it's own pagerank depending on the sites internal linking.

    Aside from that, these backlinks do work. Mileage does seem to vary from platform to platform.
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonmorgan
    Oh yeah... what do I know.
    Blog commenting is a very fast and effective means of building up high quality backlinks.

    I'm on the fence on mass automated commenting... it appears to be a hit and miss quantity over quality approach since there is no discrimination of quality where these links are dropped. I guess if you hit a few thousand sites your bound to land links on a few good pages

    However, aiming for and leaving comments on quality, high pr, low comment count pages does make a big difference quickly.

    It's also a proven way of boosting the pagerank of a site... does pagerank = authority, I'm not sure. I think it plays a part.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Originally Posted by jasonmorgan View Post

      Oh yeah... what do I know.
      Blog commenting is a very fast and effective means of building up high quality backlinks.


      I'd be willing to add that to the list except theres been alot of talk about Google devaluing blog commenting. If we could get some hard data (tests) that show that they are blowing smoke that would be great.
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonmorgan
    It's hard to say if they are blowing smoke yet or not or to what extent they might be reducing the value of comment backlinks.

    If they nuke comments I'm going to have to find a new secret sauce for quick PR. My own network of sites doesn't have enough juice to bump a new site up past PR 3 yet. I still have to rely on other sites to get past that.

    I have a couple of new sites that are only default WP themes with no content that I've been casually adding blog comment backlinks too.

    Problem is, I have to wait until the next google PR update to see what effect the comment backlinks are going to have.

    Under previous conditions I'd expect them to jump up a few PR spots.

    It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to create a couple of sub-domains, pick a nonsense word and throw different backlink types at each of them and see which one comes up on top. I''m sure somebody has done this already I just don't recall seeing it. Terry Kyles experiment was close but he didn't use the same keywords for each site so the results aren't 100% reliable.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Originally Posted by jasonmorgan View Post



      I have a couple of new sites that are only default WP themes with no content that I've been casually adding blog comment backlinks too.

      Problem is, I have to wait until the next google PR update to see what effect the comment backlinks are going to have.
      Not sure why. I mean for PR yes but can't you see movement in the Serps to determine if its working?
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonmorgan
    The method I'm using for these sites is similar to what I had posted here...

    http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-ppc-seo-discussion-forum/164060-your-number-one-link-tactic.html

    *edit* I dunno why the link isn't working :confused:

    So, at this point in time I'm not as concerned with keywords and anchor text as I am with boosting up the authority and PR of the sites and letting them age until I get around to working with them.

    The whole idea is that by the time I do get around to working on the sites I've let them age for a couple of months and have a bunch of quality backlinks already pointing at them that I wouldn't be able to get normally. The britannica blog doesn't like linking out to sales sites but I really really like their high PR, low OBL pages.

    This method of mine may be total crap and a waste of time. I don't know of anyone else who does this. I just like hitting the ground running on a new site with as much going in my favor as I can get.

    *edit #2* I do seem to get better results on a site when I do follow this method over a new site using a brand new domain with no backlinks or PR. The sites tend to have content indexed faster and pick up traffic faster.
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  • Profile picture of the author echealth
    This is a great thread and technically I am a newbie as I have only been doing this for 6 months, but it has been a very aggressive 6 months.
    I will add one more point here, and that is that the sandbox is real! I am competing for very high traffic terms and one day in the middle of the night about 5 months in, Google let me out of the Sandbox and I hit page 1 for my main keyword. I don't believe that I am entirely out of the Sandbox yet (my main domain url is just over 7 months old) but I can't prove that the way that the Sandbox thing happened to me. For non high traffic phrases, I was able to be on the first page at number 1 the second I onlywired my other sites.
    So to me the Sandbox is real, but only for high traffic phrases. There can be no doubt about this, because I had a ton of natural backlinks which I got manually hour after hour of working.
    Thanks for this thread Mike.
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  • Profile picture of the author lucygary
    Thanks for sharing the nice info .
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  • Profile picture of the author fiero
    Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

    6 ) .... It would be an exact science if the algorithm was fully known but elements of it are known and can be deduced from search results.
    Thanks for sharing. Google states that it uses more than 200 signals to determine which pages are most important. Is this what you meant by 'elements' in your point above? Do we know what are they? Regards.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Originally Posted by fiero View Post

      Thanks for sharing. Google states that it uses more than 200 signals to determine which pages are most important. Is this what you meant by 'elements' in your point above? Do we know what are they? Regards.
      Yes that was what I was referring to and no we don't know what they all are but we do know some key ones. Google will never release all the keys as the secrecy keeps people from entirely gaming the system.
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