Link inversion, the least known major ranking factor.
If there are multiple instances of the same document on the web, the highest authority URL becomes the canonical version. The rest are considered duplicates.
- Inbound links pointing towards duplicates are inverted towards the canonical URL
- This is called “link
…
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[SEO Test] Tabs and Accordions not OK in Mobile-First
An SEO test was conducted on three sets of mobile-first websites with similar authority.
Our results show that content hidden behind tabs and accordions remains devalued.
The page ranks, just not enough to compete with a site that doesn’t hide …
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How I recorded user behaviour on my competitor’s websites
Here’s what I did:
- User lands on my page (referrer: google)
- When they hit “back” button in Chrome, JS sends them to my copy of SERP
- Click on any competitor takes them to my mirror of competitor’s site (noindex)
- Now
…
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SEO Experiment: CTR Manipulation
1,500 Mechanical Turk workers were instructed to:
- search for [money term]
- search for [money term, test site brand]
- click on [test site]
I wanted to see if a follow-up search and high CTR had any impact on Google Suggest and …
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Does link disavow tool do anything?
Yes. It looks like it.
As embarrassing as it is, I accidentally left one of my SEO tests unchecked for about a year. For all you scientist types, it’s a sample of one so feel free to stop reading at …
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Can quality content rank without links? [SEO Experiment]
- Hypothesis: Quality content can rank well without links for low competition queries.
- Experiment Result: False.
- Start Date: August 2016
- End Date: April 2018
- Number of Queries: 265
- Number of Pages: 30
- Domain: 1
Between August 2016 and late October …
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Test Update: Hidden Content
If a piece of content really important don’t hide it in any way on your page. Display it clearly visible for both users and search engines.
Key items:
- Don’t hide important content using mechanisms such as tabs and accordions
- If
…
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Negative Impact of 301 Redirects
Redirecting four of our popular blog posts to a commercial page lowered its rankings in Google.
Redirected posts:
- https://dejanseo.com.au/hello-extortion-email/
- https://dejanseo.com.au/thin-content-update/
- https://dejanseo.com.au/google-update-may-2014/
- https://dejanseo.com.au/2nd-biggest-serp-flux-2013/
Target page:
Type of redirect: 301
Search term: SEO Brisbane
Scope: Same Domain
Initial Results
301 redirects …
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User Behaviour Data as a Ranking Signal
Note: This article was first published on Moz Blog. This version does not use hypotext functionality and will be used to test the performance of hidden content in Google’s search.
Question: How does a search engine interpret user …
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Experiment Results: Can Hidden Content Rank Well?
Background
Last month I learned that one of our clients had a legal requirement to display a lightbox-style notification prior to allowing access to full page content. We tested performance of content behind tabs in the past and know that Google’s search snippets don’t highlight terms not immediately visible on the page.…
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Testing the influence of URL citations and term proximity on document indexation and ranking
Our aim was to determine whether phrases surrounding non-link URL citations on the web act as an off-site ranking factor. For the purpose of our experiment we had 42 citation pages indexed. Each page contained a written URL of our test document with a test phrase in its proximity.…
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Link Juice Hack for PDF Files
PDF documents are abundant on the web. A quick search will return over one billion results from Google’s index and almost all of these documents will have outbound links. Surprisingly all evidence so far suggests that by design, PDF documents don’t circulate link signals the way HTML documents do.…
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Experiment: Brand Visibility on Google+
Earlier this year I published a comprehensive study of content and brand visibility on Google+ and one of the most intriguing concepts outlined in the study was the notion that Google+ represents a form of a display network. “Discovery Paths for Brands and Content” was going to be my sequel, but I decided to test out a few of my ideas in an experiment before I speculate any further.…
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