9 Months and 9 Days Later - Keyword vs Links Experiment

[goodroi]

It has been 9 months since I started a simple test to answer a question about what is more important - keywords in url or backlinks by trying to rank for an imaginary keyword "goodroipow" [webmasterworld.com...] .

It was very interesting for the first few days to watch how Google crawled new pages and updated their results. Then it became interesting to watch how sites were scraping the content and how Google responded to that.

I have one question for you: What have you been testing?

ps I am curious to see how this post ranks in Google for goodroipow or if they will just filter it out.

Update July 22 - goodroipow.com is live, with almost no links to it. I did mention it in twitter. As for people curious about my findings, I strongly suggest you watch the serps and form your own opinion. Some things to pay attention to #1 how links impact ranking, #2 how keyword placement imacts ranking (in content, title, domain, url) #3 how users impacts rankings.

[edited by: goodroi at 3:36 pm (utc) on Jul 22, 2013]

[mromero]

I see two results, one for the WP page and another for the original post on WW mentioning goodroipow although I wonder if goodroipow is good enough to get as much attention in the media as it should be getting.

What are your thoughts on the results coming from the Goodroipow Project?

This brings to mind a post I came across some time ago which was excellent. But the post contained a phrase in a foreign language that mystified me as I knew right away that such a phrase cannot exist. And this phrase was the keystone of the post.

I put in this non-existent phrase in the Search Engines and the post is the only one that comes up.

The phrase was repeated several times in an otherwise nice and timeless post as the SE apparently does not know it makes the post worthless as a source of reference.

I rewrote and updated the post and of course fixed the non-existent phrase and a couple other errors of fact and the new post is now a well regarded article.

[edited by: mromero at 8:57 pm (utc) on Jul 15, 2013]

[bloard]

What I find interesting is how Bing gets this messed up with Groupon without a spelling suggestion option and how Yahoo with the same index returns only one result, the WebmasterWorld thread. (unless something is personalized for me in Bing)

[seoskunk]

It has been 9 months since

Wow long time, you could have had a baby in that time (or your partner)

Anyway links vs keyword in url. I would say you should also have had keyword as the domain name as a test and I would bet this would beat all.

[frankleeceo]

Sorry, how did it turn out as a part of the test? It is hard to tell...is backlink stronger or the url keyword stronger?

[JohnRoy]

I don't know what this test is worth if it's for a keyword that is not searched for, or competed.

[Planet13]

Well, the #1 result for me was:

badcrazytest.wordpress.com

followed by the two posts here one webmasterworld that relate to the experiment.

followed by some twitter results.

Only after I click the repeat the search with the omitted results included.

Do I get to see the goodroipow.blogspot post.

[aakk9999]

@JohnRoy
Perhaps it shows "vanilla" Google behaviour?

Google UK:
- badcrazytest on wordpress #1
- goodroipow on wordpress filtered out, only shows when clicked on "repeat the search with omitted results included"
- WebmasterWorld Oct thread as #3
- WebmasterWorld today's thread at #4
- #2 is an URL shortener from twitter, pointing to badcrazytest subdomain on wordpress

I would say you should also have had keyword as the domain name as a test and I would bet this would beat all.

This would be interesting, yes. I also think this might beat the above results and be #1, which is my experience with EMDs in low competitive niche, even if they have a few (quality!) pages only.

[creeking]

What have you been testing?

nothing.

It has been 9 months since I started a simple test to answer a question about what is more important - keywords in url or backlinks by trying to rank for an imaginary keyword "goodroipow"

what were the results?

[netmeg]

What have you been testing?

Ad placement and styling, and navigation anchor text. This month.

[jimsthoughts]

What kind of tease is this?

It has been 9 months since I started a simple test to answer a question about what is more important - keywords in url or backlinks

So what are your findings? ...besides that WebmasterWorld can rank high for that if you post it here :) ...hehe, love ya Greg.

[jimbeetle]

I'm not sure if the keyword *anywhere* in the url carries a heck of a lot of weight, but I've been testing a keyword domain for a number of years and that sure as heck does.

When the domain had a single holding page with a <title>keyword</title> and some "Coming soon" copy it usually held positions 1 or 2 and stayed stable for 5 or 6 years.

When I changed hosts I forgot to upload any pages at all, so for the past 5 or 6 years it's been completely empty, yet still usually ranks 4 or 5 for [keyword]. Only the most powerful, largest sites outrank it.

Oh, and Bing -- correctly -- does not include this domain in it's index.

[indyank]

#2 is an URL shortener from twitter,

and funnily it is a robots.txt blocked url....

[indyank]

Bing just shows me the webmasterworld results (this one and the other thread)...nothing else...

[goodroi]

Anyone curious about how an exact match domain would impact the rankings can look now. You'll notice the emd is not optimized at all for this keyword.

[Planet13]

Certainly I agree with your hypothesis listed on your EMD site. And I certainly agree that google is like a psycho girl from high school...

On the other hand, I think we have seen instances of EMDs ranking for no reason; I remember not too long ago searching for "widget recipes" and the number three result was widgetrecipes.com which had, soley, a "coming soon" for the home page - and that was it.

Certainly it seems like - all things being equal - EMDs can give you a leg up on the competition. That is with all other things being equal.

Part of that probably ALSO comes from the potential benefit of more exact-match keyword anchor text that EMDs get.