When running Cora reports, you will often find that keywords in LI tags is a strong correlating factor. Since LI tags are often used in a website’s navigation, what we could be seeing is a high correlation of keywords within the navigation tag as opposed o keywords in lists on the page.
This test aims to determine whether keywords in LI tags within the navigation tag are a stronger factor than keywords in LI tags in the body tag. In the previous test, we found that there didn’t appear to be a benefit, for this test, we do it in the inverse.
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Alright, test 393. Again, any questions? Jesper's test idea: links in bold and italic. That is a good one. Let me write that, links in bold and italic. I think we did that one but I'll check.
I'm in the mastermind and in the mastermind we got some stupid smart people in there, way smarter than me that tells you the level and the value of having a mastermind but there's a whole bunch of other html tags that you can use and leverage and I want to fire off some tests with those. I just got to figure out the testing tool a little bit more so that I can apply the html tags inside of there and make sure that it recognizes us.
That's going to be I think it's going to be awesome when we start getting into some schema stuff and some entity stuff and applying it, mixing that with the html tags that are there. It's going to be cool. All right. Meredith added, you can have bold and italic interlinks, outbound links and then that'd be three different variations in that test. It'll be interesting to see how that would wash out. Let's talk to Hunter about that, see how we can arrange that.
OK. Are keywords in li tags and navigation a stronger factor than keywords in li tags in the body and this is based off of seeing the li tags. Control pages were set up, drop to the bottom which is pretty much definitive.
I think that matched the other test here based off a memory if the li tags were not in the nav and it really didn't help you as a ranking factor, which is interesting that it correlates. But I will say, because the way Cora runs is not really saying li tags in the nav versus out. Unless, he added that factor and I haven't seen it but I think he just says li tag.
Now, that comes into the point where you got to go into the top ten of your competition and say and look at where that apply. It's kind of safe to say that unordered list is not really going to do you any good in this single test environment. Playing devil's advocate to our test though if you're using an unordered list like this -- one two, three, four, five for example, now you have features snippet opportunities depending on the terms that you're going after.
Don't take this as a "I don't want to use lists inside of my content" at all. That is not what this is saying, I think. But if you are looking at it in a single test environment it's clear that the navigation one versus this... and it's li tags which is interesting as an ordered list and then li is here. I'd have to look at that in html. I haven't actually looked that closely to see.
This would be interesting to see if that's actually set up that way and does it make a difference that it's not. It's a list, right? It's an unordered list because it's using the bullets versus li tags and maybe we're violating the html rules of the use of li tags if a list should be ordered 1, 2, 3 versus bullets. That would be pretty cool. Something to look at too.
Always questions with these tests which is the point, get you asking more questions and thinking this stuff out. I'm playing devil's advocate a little bit with our own stuff. So, very interesting. Any questions on tests 393? I know we beat that one prior to deadhorse at this point.
Can I go back? I don't know. I don't know if it's open. I was asked to really explain this one a little bit. Let me close this, get out of the way. Let me know. I'm getting closer to the end. The end is near.
The test is an ordered URL which is this code line right here. That's an unordered list versus this which is the test. We just look at that. That's a list, right?
So, typically, unordered lists result in this bullet point mark right here. The idea is if I'm using this code inside of my content, is it a ranking factor versus not having it right here? So, just putting the URL inside of the page so blah here's my hero.
That's what they were testing and the results is that the one with the bullet point, the unordered list tag right there was the one that actually ranked and this one was just in there in the page. There was no list whatsoever associated with it.
This one dropped immediately and stayed there and this one bounced up and down a little bit, according to his reports, but they went up, came down a little bit and then went up, came down a little bit and then stayed there which is typical in the eyes of a test.
This test is actually really good one to add to leaderboard. So, you have your title tag, your h1s, all of the things and see where this stacks up against the rest of those on-page elements and whether or not you're wasting your time. I am going to guess that if I set up my pages, some money page, money page, money page, unordered list, unordered list. This is my link to my silos and I said that wrong. This would be on a silo page.
don't link back to my silo pages like Kyle Roof does. But this is a silo page and all my other silo pages are here. That these would actually get more click through because they're in bullets now and people look for bullets. They want to read fast and stuff so is it relevant to them etc. So, if you're building your silos out right you should probably get a lot more CTR, which in theory, if you're on the side of user metrics that improve rankings that would actually help out the silo more powerful.
So, for the question: So, a bullet in front of the link? Correct. Is a positive ranking factor? Correct. It ranked the page it was linking to.
Why do you think Google favors a bullet?
I don't know. I have no idea. I think maybe just because it's some ~ to tell you the truth. Who knows why they would look at that. I think also there's some other html tags that emphasize terms, etc. And when you're looking at it from a developer's perspective you're going to put your bullets inside to emphasize those points.
Maybe that's coded into the algorithm that bullets are emphasis thus more relevant than just having you inside of the text.
Another example of emphasis is the em tag. That's emphasis strong. So, strong is another example of an emphasis tag. There's a few other ones inside of html - the standard language. I'll be piecing ~ some of those theory and seeing if they benefits.
There is a SIA test this year that shows this is more -- this is the new standard. So, strong versus bold. Bold still exists. An emphasis still exist but strong is really the industry standard now, the coding standard. So, I think if you're using WordPress right now, that defaults to strong so you want to have your keywords in bold. But beyond that i... That's the only reason I would think that it would result in higher rankings, by just having that there.
Dori mentioned that it's linking to the page. That's not how this test is written up. If that's the case that needs to be a little bit more clear. She's saying that this is linking to and this is linking to these pages but the way this is written up it says all pages except one receive links inside the unordered list.
So, in this case, all pages but this one receive links inside the unordered list and then all pages but this one did not. They just got the links inside of there. If that's the case good test is written incorrectly. So, that might be something to look at too. But if it was like word of that linked out to and they are all linking out to the same page or whatever and they just have that URL.
Obviously, I can't see the testing pages. I can't verify that but if that's the case this test is written incorrectly based off of the data that Dori gave me, in case you wanted a monkey wrench to throw into the issue.