Ideas to test your own SEO on your own site

[travelswcharlie]

A while back, JWJ, PageZ, and others, were doing some tests to see what worked on their own sites to get better rankings in the search engines.

The results were enlightening, and proved once again that actual experience beats out personal opinions and SEO theories every time.

I ran across an article I hope will inspire some more real-world testing.

It's by Mike Davidson, CEO of Newsvine.

He created 15 new files and and set up different scenarios to test a made-up word... one that would be unlikely to appear randomly and mess up his results.

He used the word "lodefizzle", in different contexts and different placements, to see what worked and what didn't... and what combinations of poor HTML or readability affected search results.

The article starts out with a rather light-hearted test he calls the "Roundabout SEO Test", then after a page or two gets down to some very good ideas that anyone could use to test their own sites to get best search engine results.

Here's the link:

http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2006/01/the-roundabout-seo-test

[jukcoder]

Not a mod & hate to act like 1

ShoeMoney is TimeIsMoney --> ..ing fishy around here

Regards

[Sharron]

Not a mod & hate to act like 1

ShoeMoney is TimeIsMoney --> ..ing fishy around here

Regards

Yep I think you are right. Super Mod's?

[trackerm]

Well spotted :)

[trackerm]

A very good read.

Conclusion: Although good semantics are somewhat valuable in optimization, simple things like proper titles, descriptive filenames, and incoming links are dramatically more important.

The only thing I didnt like was only testing invalid code to where it didn't render on a browser. Of course a blank page due to invalid code should be hammered by Google.

[Sharron]

As a result of that read, I've started a small test of my own. Took a few screen shots of the top 10 results for specific key words. Then went to my pages and made a couple of small changes.

added a couple of words to my meta keyword tag, then again in one or two places in the text and one place in a <h1> tag.

I had just updated my xml sitemap and resubmitted it this morning. Last time google was there was on Feb 7th. I wonder if this test will alter any results.

Thanks for sharing the article!

[travelswcharlie]

As a result of that read, I've started a small test of my own. Took a few screen shots of the top 10 results for specific key words. Then went to my pages and made a couple of small changes.

added a couple of words to my meta keyword tag, then again in one or two places in the text and one place in a <h1> tag.

I had just updated my xml sitemap and resubmitted it this morning. Last time google was there was on Feb 7th. I wonder if this test will alter any results.

Thanks for sharing the article!

Will be listening to hear how it goes!

[travelswcharlie]

A very good read.

The only thing I didnt like was only testing invalid code to where it didn't render on a browser. Of course a blank page due to invalid code should be hammered by Google.
Mark,

I think he did that to prove or disprove the claim that many (lazy people probably) make that the whole "optimizing" thing is nothing but a money-making ploy of SEO professionals, and they point out examples where blank pages and sometimes non-working web sites get top ratings.

[Sharron]

ok I've a result from my wee experiment.

Now all I have to do is find out what I did with the screenshots I had made on the "day" that I first changed my keywords, and added to my <h> tag.

Today I checked and wow I made the first page of google results.! yah And that isn't bad considering that the text or name I was experimenting with is up against an apparent UK model, actor star.

However the results are showing up a bit different then usual with <hr> and such, it would appear that I came in #10 out of 1 - 10 of about 292,000

I'll get back to this as soon as I find my screenshots!


oh darn it, I found them but neglected on the 11th to make a full page screenshot! grrrrrrrrrr so I can't prove anything.


oh well, I know I wasn't there on the 11th, but am on the 17th.

http://www.designbyatfb.com/temp-images/sd21107-b.gif

http://www.designbyatfb.com/temp-images/sd21707-b.gif