bobSEO.com : Search Engine Optimization
Bob Sakayama, SEO
Ranking Experiments
SEO knowledge can only come from experience. The search engines don't want us to know how they rank sites - for good reason. But if you rely on the SEO forums, you're going to get exposed to a lot of heresay, and some major untruths, because no one can hold the claim makers accountable.
So how can we really learn useful facts? Simple. Do experiments.
Most SEOs have been experimenting with their own sites for a long time. One really search crazed practitioner did much more. Bob Sakayama put up hundreds of experiments whose sole purpose was to definitively reveal one fact. These are controlled experiments where all factors are kept the same except for one variable. In Bob's case, a test could be whether h1 beats title tag, when several identical pages are posted with only this difference. What about directory structure - do directory names count in ranking sites? Is the link anchor more important than the filename nomenclature. Bob's experiments provide reliable answers upon which to base an SEO effort..
Here are two experiments you can see the results of. Do a search for "imposimazool" and then "growlerfred." Sometimes it pays to do these in Yahoo. Go to any page that is found (this document now ranks #1 for one of these terms, so ignore it), and notice that it is a part of a group of pages that look exactly the same, except for a variable.
"growlerfred" proves that in Yahoo, directory nomenclature is ignored in ranking a site.
"imposimazool" proves that in Google the title tag beats a lot of other important elements. Also proves that both Yahoo and Google index content and links hidden with off page style.
These are the kinds of experiments that enable Bob to be certain that the resources expended on SEO go toward productive efforts.