GUESTS & RESOURCES
Episode Overview:
Join host Ben as he continues his conversation with Kyle Roof, cofounder, and SEO at Page Optimizer Pro. Today the duo talks more about testing, specifically about an SEO competition, Kyle participated in that ended with surprising results.
Back in 2018, a Facebook group called SEO Signals Lab launched a competition for SEOs to rank for the search term “rhinoplasty Plano” within 30 days and using a brand new domain. Kyle’s site contained mostly Lorem Ipsum plus relevant keywords (in English) using the proper on-page locations, and he also used a few citation building services for link building. While he was only in position #7 after the 30 days had ended, what followed next was quite unexpected.
As the days continued, Kyle’s site ended up ranking #1 in the SERP as well as for map listings. Search Engine Journal ran an article about the competition with an angle that Kyle’s non-English site was making fun of Google. Hours after the article, Kyle’s site was deindexed by Google. And soon after, 20 of his unrelated test sites were also deindexed as “spam.” The cherry on top: Google wrote a new rule to account for this. From Kyle’s perspective, it means he was right about what he was saying and doing with on-page SEO.