SEOTesting: the Great Debate

Testing is a time honored tradition with SEO's from the days when infoseek provided the exact point at which the repetition of phrases, keyword stuffing images and other spamilicious activity would get you penalized and the penalty was simply it did not accept the submission! That's a test.... some "testing" is based on correlation and conjecture as to causation or an SEO theory and verification of the theory by reaching a benchmark or goal indicating verification of the theory. SEO tools and Organizations like the Moz can do the big "tests" determine correlations between ranking and SEO techniques but in the end.... testing "the pack" means the correlation found is determined by the skill of the SEO and web development implementers in the pack. If a design trend (like big asse sliders and images at the top of home pages and blog posts) is a "page quality" and/or a conversion menace everyone following that trend is being affected the same way so the data is to some extent skewed by everyone making the same mistake. The Hangout Video: Highlights Introductions: Bill Slawski blogs on SEO By the SEA and is Director of SEO Research at Go Fish Digital, Eric Enge General Manager of Perficient Digital is and Dr. Pete/ Pete Myers Marketing Scientist at the Moz and Steve Plunkett an SEO for hire in Dallas. Deconstructing Google Algos 3:33: Dave kicked the debate off with a quick descriptions of testing that deconstructing of a Google algo and why and how these tests can be skewed by query space and classification. The panel covered correlation studies and other large scale tests/studies. SEO Private Testing 23:50: Dave started this segment with a discussion of testing on a single site, split testing on a page, and annotating all activity on a site as other methods of testing. SEO Testing 39:45: Dave asked the panel what have they learned about how to do SEO testing and/or learned about SEO from doing SEO testing.