Seo Test - Real Search Engine Tests

Okay, like I said it will be a few weeks before I get this rolling but the basic idea at the moment is something like this, although this may end up completely different when I start if I think of flaws in the idea or improvements.

1. Some things I want to test are.
2. Duplicate content - how much does it really matter.
3. Nofollow  links- Do they still help your position in the SERPS
4. Amount of pages and internal linking methods - how much does it matter
5. Domain name - how important compared to html name for instance
6. Domain Age - with previous links and without
7. Footprints - i.e. is it a bad idea to have your sites all listed in googles webmasters tools. Does it devalue your interlinking
8. HTML vs Database driven
9. Bold text, Header tags vs normal text
10. alt tag in images, does it give weight to the keywords in the page

I’ll edit this post as things pop in to my head and add to the list.

How am I going to do the test?

Well, I’m going to create the pages from scratch, mostly new domains and mostly single pages to start with. I might do one or two with aged domains (probably a good idea) and then build them all as time goes.

Why am I doing this? It’s for my own curiosity but I also want to clear some of the ambiguity that surrounds SEO. It’s not that I disbelieve any of it, my main beef is that I think only a small handful of so called experts speak from actual experience.

My main goal is not to find ways to race to the top of the SERPS but learn how to NOT waste time when I am racing up the SERP ladder. In other words, I think we spend a lot of time avoiding techniques that don’t have as much negative impact as the general consensus

Posted on October 17th, 2007