Ridiculous On-Page SEO Assertions

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, July 8, 2009 Comments (4)

I’m a firm believer in testing. I’m also a firm believer that on-page SEO is extremely important. One doesn’t need a test to know that.

However, some SEOs continue to question age-old search engine optimization wisdom.

Not to be disparaging, but there are problems with the methodology of The Google Cache’s testing. Let’s start here:

Generate 7 pages of nonsensical text with identical numbers of words (to exclude Keyword Density/Frequency as a variable).

I understand the reasoning here. You want to isolate the testing paramaters. OK, no problem. But keyword density isn’t important anyway, so why bother excluding it as a variable. A better test would be to test the variables you want to test along with a variety of density and frequency patterns, using each variation as a separate control. In that case The Google Cache would have written 49 pages of text with 7 pages each of nonsensical text for 7 different keyword density patterns.

The second problem is right here:

Insert the keyword into either the Title, H1, H2, H3, Strong, Emphasize or Span tags on those pages, being careful to make sure that each keyword-tag is represented 1 time and only 1 time in each page.

On-page SEO is not about isolation of variables. Rather, it’s about multiple variables working together simultaneously. For instance, the keyword-tag works best if used in conjunction with anchor text using the same keyword-tag, an URL based on the same keyword-tag, and the keyword-tag used multiple times on the page within the body text. Placing that keyword-tag in the Title tag alone may produce a certain result whereas placing the keyword-tag in multiple other locations as well as the Title tag could produce other results.

While The Google Cache recognizes these weaknesses in its own test, I’m not happy with the overall conclusion of the test based on their results. As state, it says:

There are many more reasons why on-page optimization is still valuable, but at best it can only be described as a minor part of the Search Engine Optimization process. (emphasis mine)

I beg to differ. Having built web pages with just the above elements and no off-page SEO to accompany them and achieving great rankings using only on-page SEO, I wouldn’t consider it to be a minor part of the SEO process. I’d consider a major part of the SEO process. Otherwise, content wouldn’t be king; it would be court jester.

Comments (4) Category: SEO

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4 Comments

Comment by Russ Jones

Made Wednesday, 8 of July , 2009 at 4:44 pm

I appreciate your response.

First, I would hope that to “question age-old search engine optimization wisdom” is not disparaging to you or your readers. Anyone who does not continue to test these is destined to fall behind the curve.

Second, it would be horribly ludicrous for Google’s algorithm to be susceptible to simple on-page keyword placement. Google began devaluing these tactics with the keywords meta-tag years and years ago, and it makes sense they would continue to do the same.

Third, if on-page optimization was of high importance, it would be nearly impossible for Google to discern between the myriad competitors which could implement near identical keyword placements and HTML optimization throughout their page. Google has to figure out a way to rank pages 1 to 10, even if all pages score a perfect 100 on the on-page relevancy tests. Thus, the optimization techniques which make the marginal differences are off-page.

Finally, I made it clear in my post that these were preliminary results and that the results do not take into consideration any synergistic relationship between multiple keyword placements. Instead, they merely describe that there is virtually no difference in the ranking power of keywords that occur within various tags on a page. A single keyword in plain text on your page is every bit as valuable as a single keyword in an H1 tag. The results were confirmed at a macro level by SEOMoz’s study which looks through a real dataset of billions of pages.

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Wednesday, 8 of July , 2009 at 7:01 pm

@Russ Jones – Thanks very much for your reply and the additional information…you have made some very good points and I appreciate it…

Comment by Ani López

Made Thursday, 9 of July , 2009 at 4:08 am

That page at thegooglecache.com has been down lately, now it is back but all the comments deleted. Russ, didn’t you like them?

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Thursday, 9 of July , 2009 at 5:22 am

@Ani López – It seems to be up just fine for me…