It’s another week and we are back to the SEO Laboratory to go over some more tests.

Recently we have been launching a massive series of micro tests alongside our bigger tests. In just the past 24 hours alone, we have already run 7 tests!

We are growing our Laboratory and have already brought on some new scientists to help with the testing. If you want to become an SEO Mad Scientist, work directly with our testing team, and network with top SEO, you’ll just need to comment #JoinTheScientist on the Facebook post in the group. Link below!

>>https://www.facebook.com/groups/localseocommunity/permalink/1646681395488370/

Just in case you missed any previous updates, don’t forget to catch up in our archives here>> https://web20ranker.com/category/seo-news/

Now, moving on to some new tests…

With the wide range of tests we currently have running, it is difficult for us to effectively report on the test itself, the results, AND any conclusions we find from our test results. This update has ended up being over 1,000 words but we still are only able to get half the data to you.

So today we are going to review a group of current tests, what we did, and why we did it. This will give everyone a better base point for when we get results we need to analyze.

This week are going to discuss our contextual reference/linking tests.

In this test, we are exploring the difference in authority for a contextual reference on the page, based on how the text is optimized. Let’s review the first set of micro tests.

The initial question was what type of contextual reference carries the most authority? Is it a plain contextual reference, a contextual reference with an inner link, or a contextual reference with an outbound link…

We had a lot of mixed data on this from observing things like:
Cases where inner linking pages catabolized target pages
Or the long-discussed belief that linking out to an “authority site” helps page authority.

These questions along with how much power does internal linking have and how is a contextual link (inbound or outbound) best optimized, are all questions we hope to get answers too.

Now let’s review the different test variations we have running:

TEST VARIATION #1
Page 1 – Just Contextual Reference
Page 2 – Contextual Reference Innerlinking to Page 1
Page 3 – Contextual Reference Outbound Linking to External Page. (Generic page)

TEST VARIATION #2
Page 1 – Just Contextual Reference
Page 2 – Contextual Reference Innerlinking to Page 3
Page 3 – Contextual Reference Outbound Linking to External Page. (Generic page)

TEST VARIATION #3
Page 1 – Just Contextual Reference
Page 2 – Contextual Reference Innerlinking to Page 1 (no contextual reference)
Page 3 – Contextual Reference Outbound Linking to External Page. (Generic page)

TEST VARIATION #4
Page 1 – Just Contextual Reference
Page 2 – Contextual Reference Innerlinking to Page 3 (no contextual reference)
Page 3 – Contextual Reference Outbound Linking to External Page. (Generic page)

TEST VARIATION #5
Page 1 – Just Contextual Reference
Page 2 – Contextual Reference Innerlinking to Page 1
Page 3 – Contextual Reference Outbound Linking to External Page. (Opt. Web 2.0)

TEST VARIATION #6
Page 1 – Just Contextual Reference
Page 2 – Contextual Reference Innerlinking to Page 3
Page 3 – Contextual Reference Outbound Linking to External Page. (Opt. Web 2.0)

TEST VARIATION #7
Page 1 – Just Contextual Reference
Page 2 – Contextual Reference Innerlinking to Page 1 (no contextual reference)
Page 3 – Contextual Reference Outbound Linking to External Page. (Opt. Web 2.0)

TEST VARIATION #8
Page 1 – Just Contextual Reference
Page 2 – Contextual Reference Innerlinking to Page 3 (no contextual reference)
Page 3 – Contextual Reference Outbound Linking to External Page. (Opt. Web 2.0)

You can see we have a lot of variations of each test running with slight changes. One set of 4 is linking out to a generic page on Wikipedia while the other set of 4 is linking to a web 2.0 we made that had optimization done for our test term.

As we conduct these tests we often come across more variables to test as well which can double or triple our test variables. We are also doing each one of these variables tests multiple times to confirm the data.

The 8 variations above are being set up with just a number for the H1 and URL, with an image on the page and a contextual reference to our test keyword, no other content. We did this to try to eliminate variables as well as get a better idea about recreating all of these variable tests with Lorum Ipsum content, as well as running a test with generic content with similar word count AND duplicate content.

This puts us at 32 different variations for this test.

We will be collecting the data from these tests over the next 2 weeks to give a final report. With 32 results to review it may be a two-part…

Next week we will be reviewing results from a duplicate content test we discussed a while back. We have even more interesting findings covering rankings and authority leveraging duplicate content.

Until next time, happy testing!

🔹 Dragos Turlescu – View Post Here

What is the best way to expand GMB rankings to surrounding towns?

🔹 Andrea Settle Knauer – View Post Here

What would YOU do here:
Company A is not ranking in the map pack for “service, city” because his mailing address is just outside said city. They have a dominating number of Google reviews (150)
However, the three ranking map pack business with just a handful of reviews doesn’t even have their address stated. Looks like they’re positioned in the top spots as regional service providers.
If you were Company A – would you remove your address and position yourself as a regional service provider instead? Maybe optimize images with geolocation?