The goals of the test is to take things to that next level. We want to develop a system, through testing, to determine ranking strength.
Test Downloads
Transcription Below
This is the test that is going to drive us into 2017. Everything that we look at metrics-wise and it doesn’t matter what system you are looking at, is going to give you a valuation of strength, a determination of strength. They are going to give you a number, they are going to give you two numbers, it doesn’t matter. They have got some value and that value is a strength value and then we have to try and extrapolate what that value means, what that strength means.
The idea of we’ve got a TF 20, a DA 30, a PA of this, a QF that, RT, etc. Those are all just giving us strength. Nothing though, is giving us a ranking value and so, what I want to do is determine ranking value or have a system like, if I do this, it will be worth that, in terms of rank. How we can evaluate that is running larger field tests.
As a proof of concept, running a 10-site test. The idea being, we are filling up an entire page of SERPs with test pages and then firing things that we know are ranking factors at the number 10 spot and seeing how many spots that page will move up. The hypothesis here is that different things will move different amounts, that will give us an idea of finding out what something is worth.
When you think about your economies of time, budget, where do you want to spend your time, what is the best use of your time, or what you should be doing. In this test, I have two versions of it. Version one is we are looking at Google doc links.
We play with Google docs constantly; we know that they pass juice. So using that as a base measure, is that the lowest level link, is the idea or finding really the idea of this proof of concept is finding the lowest level or the bottom here, in terms of moving the needle.
Ten pages were set up and we fired the Google doc link in the number 10 and after quite a while, what we ended up getting was the number 4 spot. The Google doc moved us from the 10 spot to the 4 spot and we can say that that is a ranking of 6. So then we ran a lowest level link – a DA of 1, TF0 link to see if we could see any difference in this kind of link.
Again, 10 pages and the link was fired in page 10 and what we’ve got was a movement to the 8 spot. The TF0, DA1 link moved us two spots. This is exciting to me. What this means that the Google doc has a power of 6, the DA0 TF1 had a power of 2 and this isn’t just a random strength evaluation. This is an actual ranking evaluation.
The implication, I think, is big. Up to this point, what we really have been able to test is what does and what does not move the needle. That is fantastic and we are able to take that information and really run with it. Now we want to look at what moves the needle more and how much value is there. I don’t think anybody else is doing this. I do not thing this exists.
This is literally what has been going on in SIA and this is going to be the focus for me in 2017 – setting up these systems where we can figure out how much things are worth, not just do they move the needle but how much do they move the needle and having a system in order to evaluate different things, links, but also different techniques.
We’ve got this group that comes out, we’ve got the latest and greatest, is it worth the $3000 that you spend vs something else. We could probably evaluate what they are talking about in terms of how strong it is and make some really good decision about if you should be doing those things techniques.
I am really excited about this and the implications we are looking at. We are actually running larger field tests, 20-30 pages so that we can get more results and say that it is not just a two, there is many or that many.