On page vs Off-page SEO : Answered.

I've been tracking the results of my SEO experiment listed here:-

http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-...xperiment.html

And I've just had a break-through! The site which has NO mention at all of the keyword - but a handful of contextual links has now been indexed and appears in the search results of google for the target keyword.

Where does it appear? It appears at the bottom of the list - below any site with mentions on it.

What does this mean? Well, one theory I had was that the ranking was resolved with some kind of multiplication - (contextual links) x (PageRank+1) x (instances of keyword on the page)

This would have meant unless you had at least one mention - it would give no combined authority and relevance. I know everyone is going to throw their arms up and quote 'Adobe Acrobat' and 'Click here' but realistically 'Click Here' probably does appear somewhere on their site - What I've done is proven without question that you can rank for a term which is not mentioned on the site through backlinks. I know this has been said before - but I wanted to prove it without question and I have.

However - the page is ranking below all the other sites, which have NO backliks at all. So what does this mean? Well, the next stage is to see how many backlinks I need to create to get the site with no mention to trump the on-page optimized sites.

Currently the winner is the 6.95% density site.

Second is the 4.86% site.

Third is 1.53% but it's long and has 25 mentions of the KW

Fourth is the 1.93% density site.

Fifth and six are posts on the log of the experiment - with hardly any density - then 7th is the no mention, but a handful of contextual links.

So what does this prove that is useful for you?

1. You can rank for a keyword that is not mentioned once on a site.

2. Your main keyword/keywords should be optimized - probably up to 7% certainly at least up to 7% doesn't give you any penalty. I may test this further by making a 25% density page to see if it gets penalized for being spammy.

3. So why all the fus about backlinks? How important are backlinks?
- Backlinks are very important, because there is a clear limit to how much relevance and authority you can gain from onpage.

So given all this information - what's my process for building a site I want to rank?

1. Pick a main keyword, possibly up to five - optimize your onpage content so you have at about 7% density and the keyword in URL, title, description, meta-keywords - the usual stuff.

2. Only once you've done that - start building or outsourcing links - following good backlinking practice is another topic, but finish step 1 then start this step.

3. Add more content, keep the density the same - the experiment has proven that at a level - mentions can trump density, density is the first priority.

4. Increase the backlink building - keeping it looking natural, and using good quality links and all the usual bunf that goes with this.

5. Now you should be starting to rank well for at least your main KW depending on the competition - now you can start building backlinks for keywords that are less important, and aren't optimized on page. If they have a little density they will rank faster and better, so maybe save the keywords which have no mentions on the site for last?

That's my theory anyway - based on the results of the experiment. I will continue the experiment and report any major changes, but hopefully this will give anyone who wants it, an idea of the best way to spend their time.