In this test, what we are looking at here is how conversions may impact rankings.
In order to do this, we have to generate traffic on these pages equally to eliminate traffic as a factor.
We also need to figure out how to measure bounce rates to keep them similar to keep those from influencing the test to see if filling out a form on a page will increase the rankings of that page.
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The idea was, you get some ranking boost from it and it actually works like that software, when you put it on there.
And it ran, it worked, it increased the ranking of the page.
The downside is after you shut off or removed the Google Form, and there is no more form filling on there, your page dropped and in the instances where I personally use that tool, every page that I ranked higher with that tool, and then I shut it off, because software is expensive.
I'm not going to keep paying for that software over and over again.
I shut off the tool and it dropped the rankings of the pages.
And not only did it drop it, it kept it permanently in that lower position.
No matter what I did after that there was no getting it back and it was one of my horrors with CTR and at the end of the day, it was what led me finally to just dump that as a link, or as a ranking method for long term projects.
If you're doing launch jacking stuff, that's great, knock yourself out and not do those over and over and over again is wonderful, right?
But for long term projects, I don't use CTR. And I don't recommend my clients use them anymore, either because of that behavior and it's not the only time I've seen it.
Hunter set up, you put this form on there, all the pages have this identical form.
He went to all of the pages, all 10 of the pages, he went to him but only two, the two test pages he filled them out and every day or I think it was every few days, he went to alternative pages, and then the two test pages, he filled this out, and then just kept going and knocking that out.
The traffic that he did, that he sent to it that increased in cause that the pages go.
And I don't necessarily see traffic, obviously the action that he took on the pages triggered a boost. And I'm not entirely sure that it wasn't time on page or bounce rate or page views.
This could be one of those three things that created this.
But once they stopped it, you can see that everything just kind of went right back to where it was.
And that's been pretty much my experience with all CTR stuff, regardless of the tool that you're using.
I'm thinking that if we started going back to all these pages and then filling out these two forms, these wouldn't move again and they would stay right where they're at. And that's just kind of a continuation. This whole process right here.
Traffic's dropping, we're not using it and we're not going to him as much anymore dropping, then traffic is stopped completely right back to where the pages were in first place.
And then the worst thing is, if this sticks like it did with the Jimmy Kelly stuff, I put all this time, money and effort to get this page up to number 1. I stopped the CTR goes back down, and I can never get this back up.
And now I don't get my money back. And I've essentially invested in a losing thing that's going to continuously weigh me down until CTR, it's in the search results naturally brings it up or until Google just the memory of Googlebot or whatever is keeping it way down there, again, is reset, then there's no getting this page back. It's kind of scary knowing that.