Page 1 for "SEO Company" - On Backlinks Alone

Ok i ran a little test, a few weeks ago i though i'd target the term SEO Company. Not a stack of results (12.6 Million) but still fairly competative with all the SEO companies & experts out there.

I purposely had very poor on page optimization, i didn't have the term in the Title, i had duplicate Meta Tags across 9 pages, didn't use the term in <h> tags, didn't use bold, didn't have any internal links with the term, the keywords arn't in my URL etc and i mentioned the term "SEO Company" just once on the page.

All considered suicide when doing SEO, but that's what i wanted.

Last night, page 1 for SEO Company really on backlinks alone and 1 mention of the term on the page. I seem to be one of very few people in the top 100 for that term who didn't have either SEO or Company in the Title.

No i've accomplished the task, i've added the term to page Title, Meta Description, Meta Keywords and mentioned it twice on the page. I've dropped to #24 on some DC's but no doubt just a shuffle due to the changes, will be interesting to see what happens.

So it just goes to show the power of backlinks and anchor text.

When i finish this test, i might target "SEO" and see what happens.

 

Nice experiment.
Yes the backlinks are the most important factor.
I hope you won't get penalized for too much keyword rich anchor text (the John Chow's case).

 

No i mixed it up, probably 45% was the term "SEO Company". I also done:

SEO and Web Design - #37 from 57.1 Million
SEO & Web Design - #27 from 57.5 Million
Web Design and SEO company - #18 from 73 Million

These rankings have all dropped since i changed the page, i was page 1 for 2 of them and #13 for the other. They will bounce back after Google the change settles.

Edit: Also noticed the term "Internet Design" has dropped from #19 to #66 for the 905 Million result term.

Goes to show newbies to SEO, even a slight tweak (even for the better) can result in wild swings for keywords the change doesn't even directly effect.

Edit2: The phrase "Internet Design Company" is #8 down from #4 for that 243 Million term.

 

nice experiment you got there... please update us.

 

Thats awesome. Keep us updated.

I am in no way a SEO pro but I have managed to build some quite good rankings from backlinks only.

//Andreas

 

How much time did it take for you to get ranked?
How old is your site?
How many links?

 

Dont forget that everybody ranks high in Google the first days and then they sink down in the serps. I would not change anything on your bad optimized pages before one month to see if you will maintain the good position also after one month. I doubt it.

 

The domain name is 8 months old, however i didn't really have anything on it until 4-5 months ago.

I have no doubt it only would of gotten stronger after 1 month, and it's hardly "first days". I went through the whole fresh content boost and ranked for the terms, slid back down and gradually worked back up the SERP's over the last 4 weeks or so.

My other test, which was on-page optimization dealing with document and keyword formatting and zero external links to the page resulted in.

"Speed Office 2007" - #3 from 130 Million
"Speed up Office 2007" - #2 from 80 Million
"Speed up Microsoft Office 2007" - #7 from 15 Million
"Office 2007 Slow Speed" - #2 from 18 Million

And literally 30 plus similar page 1 keyphrases that have all been solid since beginning of March. The only company beating me on most is Microsoft, but i'm beating them on others. But do note, i purposly disadvantaged myself by not obtaining external backlinks to the page.

Trust me, i know what i'm doing. This is only 1 of 100's of such tests i'm currently doing on dozens of domains. I've targeted Wikipedia on others and promptly put them in their place.

 

great post thanks for sharing!

 

So in essence are you saying too much on-page is bad?

 

I read once that you can achive top rankings in SERPs for using keywords in anchor texts and not using them on the webpage at all. Even Google shows results saying 'the specified term is not used on the webpage but appears in links to the site'

 

Yes, i got a blank page to PR4 and ranking page 1 on its inbound anchor terms.

However this was before Google made changes to their algo to combat Google bombing. I might have to test this again when i have some spare time to see if its still currently possible.

 

I don't think it would work now, as Big G just got smarter after those Google Bombs.
However, no harm experimenting and trying, and I appreciate your hard work.

 

I think it may still work, but possibly its effectiveness has been reduced alot. I will set up a test for it tomorrow and post the results.

Amaze no im not saying on page optimization is bad, actually ive posted both only on page and only off page examples that both yielded good results. This post is showing the benefits of anchor text by ranking for the fairly competative term "SEO Company" with probably the worst on page factors in the top 500 results.

 

thank you for the info. is the "seo company" experiment domain the tareeinternet.com domain on your sig? does the sig from DP weigh a lot?

 

The sig i only changed in the last 24 hours to that anchor when i changed the page title, metas and added the phrase twice to the page instead of once so it had little to do with the ranking.

Basically i just done the regular social bookmarking, directory & article submission, some theme sponsorship etc nothing too flash. I will write up a free report after i finish several other tests on other domains.

 

This shows one thing i allredy was sure of

Backlinks meaning off page optimization is the most important

 

Eagerly waiting for the report.
Please notify in this thread when it is ready.
thanks a lot.

 

I am eagerly waiting for the report
Thnx

 

Yes excellent post. Repped.