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SEO Tests Catalogue
This is just a sample of the documented and peer reviewed SEO Tests on offer inside of IMG. Up to 10 new tests published monthly to keep you on top of what's working in Google right now.
Tester
Test Title
Hypothesis
Category
Tags
Ted Kubaitis
We are trying to see if Keyword Density is a ranking factor.
On-Page
Keyword Density
Ted Kubaitis
If Keyword Density is the factor then the match count tests will slot in around 10% because they were kept at around that density
On-Page
Keyword Density
Ted Kubaitis
Are broken script includes a negative ranking factor?
Technical
Site Errors, SEO Audits
Ted Kubaitis
Are broken images a negative ranking factor?
Technical
Site Errors, SEO Audits
Ted Kubaitis
Are broken script includes a negative ranking factor?
Technical
Site Errors, SEO Audits
Ted Kubaitis
Testing names with in Heading Tags (Known Entities?)
On-Page
Heading Tags
Ted Kubaitis
Testing the diversity of different kinds of errors as a negative ranking factor.
Technical
Site Errors, SEO Audits
Ted Kubaitis
GSC recently started reporting on broken images. We are wondering about broken css includes.
Technical
Site Errors, SEO Audits
Ryan Hough
At least 50% of a page needs to be unique
On-Page
Duplicate Content
Ryan Hough
At least 60% of a page needs to be unique
On-Page
Duplicate Content
Ryan Hough
Pages that are similar maybe filtered
On-Page
Duplicate Content
Kyle Roof
The closer the page is to the .com the better it will rank.
Technical
Subfolders, Site Structure
Ted Kubaitis
Does having more ranking factors on a page increase rankings
On-Page
ALL THE FACTORS!
Ted Kubaitis
Are headings with no keyword matches a factor? Lets test that.
On-Page
Heading Tags
Ted Kubaitis
Search Volume for a test keyword may impact index allocation for a keyword in the primary index
Technical
Google Bot, Crawling, Indexing
Lee Witcher
With HTML language declared as English, lorem ipsum and English test pages will rank equally well.
On-Page
Language Factors
Kyle Roof
Entities are a ranking factor
On-Page
Keywords, Entities
Ryan Hough
Unique keywords are not filtered
On-Page
Keywords, Duplicate Content
Roman Barnes
Does Google follow more than 4 Redirect Hops?
Technical
Redirects
Laura Klein
An image optimized according to the Search Console Help recommendations will rank better in Google Image Results
On-Page
Image Optimization
Malte Böhm
I try to find out if comment links from an authoritative source influence the rankings.
Off-Page
DoFollow Comment Links
Kyle Roof
Rel=sponsored will not have any affect.
Off-Page
Backlinks
Mike Belanger
The more kw’s in CSS code (classes, etc) will not help with rankings.
On-Page
Technical
Kyle Roof
Google reads everything a in a title even if some of the title text is clipped by an ellipse (...) and the text is not visible in the SERPs
On-Page
Title
Vinay Karanam
Technically video with spoken words (specifically keywords) should rank best.
YouTube SEO
Technical
Kyle Roof
Google will crawl text in an iframe and will cache a page based on that content
On-Page
iFrames
Tom Chen
First H2 Tag can be placed anywhere in the content.
On-Page
Page Structure
Tom Chen
Google prefers content that are properly structured from H1 to H4.
On-Page
Page Structure
Beata Szoke
Google will prefer Blogger over other Web 2.0 platforms.
Off-Page
Web 2.0
Alex Guemez
Keywords in A Tags HREF are a ranking factor.
On-Page
Technical
Ted Kubaitis
Search variability tells us a lot about inclusion and rankings.
Case Study
Rank Tracking
Tom Chen
Having the keyword in the first 100 words provides a small boost.
On-Page
Primacy
David Meacham
Google will index the text in the video.
YouTube SEO
Image SEO
Marc Moeller
Putting the postcode and lat long next to the localized keyword will improve the ranking.
On-Page
Local SEO
Ted Kubaitis
There are indexing limits on single URLs.
Indexing
On-Page
Jo Priest
Test on subdomains shows similar results to multiple domains.
Testing
Subdomains
Vinay Karanam
Paid Promotion option should affect YouTube rankings,
YouTube SEO
Promotion
Terry Power
The presence of a relevant podcast might help rankings as it would provide another object to show Google relevance.
On-Page
Podcasts
Carolyn Holzman
By doing the same thing to set up test pages in Google, I should be able to get Bing to index pages and run some of the same tests we've been doing in Google by getting sites in Bing Webmaster.
On-Page
Bing
Kyle Roof
Google will cache text even though it is marked "disallow for crawlers"
On-Page
Bing
Tom Chen
Having the keyword multiple times in the first 100 words is a small boost to showing relevance of the content.
On-Page
Keywords
M Isse
301 Redirects trigger a change in how Google shows URLs.
Technical
URLs
Alex Guemez
Google will treat accent words differently.
On-Page
International
Lee Witcher
Keyword modifiers will display when hidden in an ARIA tag.
On-Page
Technical
Alex Guemez
Google reads keywords in A Title Tags.
On-page
Technical
Az Respes
Google orders titles in number order 1,2,3,4….
On-page
Content
Vinay Karanam
Random alpha triggers flags in YouTube accounts
YouTube SEO
Content
Lee Witcher
YouTube can be used as an indexer.
YouTube SEO
Indexing
Alex Guemez
Google Trends entities are better than Google Image entities.
On-page
Entities
Carolyn Holzman
Tight NLP clusters will beat loose NLP clusters.
On-page
NLP
Marc Moeller
Google ignores "static" ranking signals (links & on-page content) in favour of User/CTR signals and reshuffles search results if no positive CTR occurred.
Off-Page
CTR
Honey Witcher
Pages with higher entity density will index better than pages with zero entities.
On-Page
Entities
Jo Priest
You can get information if you recreate the SERPs in high competition landscapes
On-Page
SERPs
Alex Guemez
Google will read keywords in <noscript> tags.
On-page
Technical
Carolyn Holzman
Google does not calculate keywords inside an image towards keyword density.
Images
Keywords
Vinay Karanam
If you spam and advertise on youtube videos with text to speech (TTS) software, by YouTube's policy your video & account will get suspended. In this test we put that theory to work.
YouTube SEO
Paid Traffic
Lee Witcher
Video citations will improve local rankings.
YouTube SEO
Citations
Beata Szoke
Google prefers and understands schema in the same language as the site content.
On-page
Schema