Has anyone tested relevance factors on Tier 1?

[xha44a]

Hi,

I did a little case study over a couple of months with some web 2.0 properties I built. I had 100 of them created and divided them into 4 test groups and then bought different tier 2 sort of services to see which ones worked and which ones didn't. I then (1 month later) watched for which web 2.0 properties were ranking in Google for the exact match of the terms I targeted with the links, and used the positions to judge the strength/power of those Tier 2 packages. All in all, it was fun doing an actual SEO test rather than just guessing at what to buy and what would work, and there was actually a decent difference between the packages, and it was overall surprising to me what worked how.

Anyway now I want to learn more. This one is a little more tricky. I want to see what factors in a Tier 1 property push the money site hardest up the serps. I'm asking for help. First off - if someone has tested this and knows the answer I'd love to see your study

If no one has, I'd like to have some input on what factors on a Tier 1 web 2.0 property would affect the serps most. So far I've come up with a few things...

1. Anchor text of links to said Tier 1 property
2. Title tag of Tier 1 property
3. H1 of Tier 1 property
4. General topic of Tier 1 property

That's all I've come up with so far. I'm hoping you guys can help me brainstorm what else to try and play around with on this. Or point me in the right direction if you already know!

How I'm Going to Test This

1. I'm going to choose some properties in one of my test groups. I have a group of properties that were ranking 21-24 for my keywords. I figure having them that close together kind of suggest their ranking power is similar. All were created same time - so that has no influence on it.
2. I'm going to change each of the above variables for each of those properties to differentiate it from the rest.
3. I'm going to find a cluster of results in the serps (probably in the 50+ range) that are hopefully fairly similar - DA/PA.
4. I'm going to point a homepage link from 1 of each of those web 2.0 properties to one of each of those pages further down the serps.
5. I'm gonna give it a month and see what happens!

I'm hoping this will give me an idea of what matters the most when *creating* your Tier 1 properties that you're going to link. If you more seasoned veterans have some suggestions and pointers I would love to hear from you.

 

[xha44a]

Nobody done this? Or nobody willing to give away their secrets?

 

[thehobbster]

Been had done this. You don't need a test to know that driving relevancy factors through as many steps as possible is a good thing. Do dat stuff.

 

[FlipFl0p]

Dont make things complicated until you are banking and/or upgrading.

That's the root cause of failure for noobs, getting things VERY complicated then whining about it that "its really hard etc etc". When infact you could've made more money just by not twisting things around

 

[Smeems]

Think I saw that case study, it was good stuff. IIRC your contextual tier 2 stuff also performed better than the non-contextual stuff right?

If that was the case, you already have your answer. But like hobbs says - there's no real need to do this as a lot of people will tell you, from their own results and tests, that relevancy and contextuality (all things being equal) will help a link do better.

If you can do it - do it.

 

[djorz]

Relevancy will boost you more through serps.

Even if it will not make a huge difference in the test because the links are not coming from Major important places that have real power it will help you in other ways down the road.

Relevant links help you get through manual reviews, it will help you with current or future algorithmic updates and most important, if you really are building links for traffic it will bring you better traffic that will have more Conversion Rate and that's what we really care about aren't we?

 

[Smeems]

Remembered the name of the algorithm that looks at relevancy - The hilltop algorithm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilltop_algorithm

It states that link from a page that’s closely tied to page’s content is more powerful than a link from an unrelated page.

 

[xha44a]

Thank you Smeems for that link. I have never come across that yet so it's nice to see. I particularly like the part about how the expert and authority pages relate. I think I'm going to try to make my Tier 1 pages the "expert" with obviously my money site as the "authority" pages.

I'm working on a bit Tier 1 type plan I want to run by you guys shortly... gonna see if I can put this together.