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Nine By Blue founder Vanessa Fox is author of the critically acclaimed Marketing in the Age of Google: Your Online Strategy IS Your Business, which has been called the “search marketing bible” by technology leaders. Be sure to pick up your copy today.
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September 11, 2007
Why the SEOmoz SEO Quiz Is [Almost, in a Philosophical Sense, Somewhat] Completely Wrong
SEOmoz just posted a quiz to test your mad SEO skilz.
It’s [almost, er, etc.] completely wrong.
And I say that with the utmost affection for a certain yellow-shoed person who’s coming to my house later for Buffy night. I get the idea. Basic SEO principles exist that anyone operating in the online space should know. The trouble is that SEO is art as much as science, and to top it all off (like those little sprinkles on top of cupcakes), things are always changing. Even the basics change.
Sure, you should always create a usable site, with compelling and unique content, and you should do keyword research and use those keywords in places like title tags and headings, and if you block your entire site with robots.txt, it’s unlikely to ever get indexed. And try to get a few links if you can. Some things don’t change.
But you’ll find quotes from me all over the place about how search engines don’t crawl javascript, yet I’ve seen evidence lately that they might be starting to, at least a little. And nofollow didn’t exist a couple of years ago. I bet meta keywords even used to work.
It’s impossible to know everything about SEO because some things aren’t hard and fast rules. You also have to pay attention the trends, see what works, keep evolving your tactics. And anyway, I would bet that there’s no one person who even knows 100% about how a search engine handles each step of the crawling/indexing/ranking process. Even those within the search engines don’t know all the parts to to the process. Yes, even him. Go ahead, ask him. I’ll wait. He’ll tell you the same.
But why is this quiz so wrong? Too many of the questions go beyond the science and into the art of SEO, where things are fluid and changing and open to interpretation. The quiz is more accurately a test of how much of your personal SEO philosophy matches that of SEOmoz. Like a match.com compatibility test. You and SEOmoz, sitting in a tree. Romantically optimizing title tags.
For instance, which is less useful and accurate: Alexa traffic toolbar data or Google toolbar PageRank data? I posit that it’s not a cut and dried answer. (Cut and dried? Where did that come from anyway?)
What’s the best way to avoid internal duplicate content? Block redundant versions from crawlers? Maybe. Unless those versions have a lot of links, in which case you might be losing a lot of link credit.
Does internal linking help raise the PageRank of internal pages? Well, maybe. Or maybe it just helps the discoverability of those pages and the PageRank comes naturally by virtue of being part of the site. It’s impossible to know because Google doesn’t publish PageRank numbers. You can’t really experiment to find out. (And now we can debate about whether you can use the toolbar PageRank numbers to experiment with something like this. And then once we’re done debating, things will probably change anyway.)
When should you leave the meta description of a page? Er, never? OK, I suppose if you are unable to create unique ones for every page, it doesn’t make sense to have the same one everywhere. But this whole idea of leaving it off when the page is targeted at long tail queries makes no sense. Or at least, it’s definitely more of an up for debate topic than a fundamental truth of SEO. How many disparate long tail terms are you targeting on that one page anyway? If you can’t come up with a description that fits the entire page, shouldn’t you just create multiple pages anyway for each completely separate topic? And if you do shove a bunch a bunch of unrelated stuff together on one page and the meta description isn’t relevant for queries that return that page, search engines are going to use relevant text from the content rather than the meta description anyway. Existence of a meta description tag doesn’t prevent other content to be used as the snippet instead when that would be more useful.
And then there’s the geeky side of me that says: HTTP server response that indicates a file no longer exists or isn’t working? For one thing, the same HTTP code isn’t used for both. For another thing, I know the answer they’re going for is 404, but that’s not right in either case. 404 means doesn’t exist. It’s 410 that means no longer exists. And “isn’t working” could mean anything! Is the server not working? Was the request bad? I wouldn’t be so particular, except I did sort of write the book, er help topic about it. Also, did I mention that I’m really geeky? I even have a favorite HTTP status code.
And then we get to the question that made me decide to do this blog post.
When launching a large amount of new content on a new or existing domain, the best way to release content for crawling and indexing is:
I got it wrong.
And the correct answer, when explaining why I was wrong…
…quoted me.
I answered All at once – to allow the spiders to find the content and digest it in their preferred format. But apparently the quoted me said Over time, in multiple smaller sized chunks.
Huh.
But here’s the thing. That quote was about using a 301 to move existing content. I did indeed recommend doing that slowly for a number of reasons. You want to make sure you’ve impelemented the 301 correctly. The moving pages might experience a short-term dip in indexing in ranking and you might not want that to happen to your entire site at once. You want to be able to pinpoint problems and not troubleshoot your entire site architecture.
That quote was not at all about creating all new content. Add as much of that as you want! All at once! Well, unless you’re creating millions of pages of autogenerated content! That might look suspicious! (Just saying.)
However, I admit that at least one of the questions has a black and white answer. There is no apparent search engine rankings benefit to having a keyword-matched domain name (eg www.example.com for keyword “example”). FALSE. Otherwise, I’d get traffic from searches other than porn.
Edit: My title, of course, is meant to be hyperbolic and over the top and well, easily identifiable as purposely linkbaity (er, and funny). I have a strange sense of humor. I also like potato chips in sandwiches. We all have our oddities. However, I have gone back and slightly edited the title in case it comes across as unduly harsh. I’m not saying all the answers are wrong; It’s that I feel the quiz tends to ask the wrong kinds of questions — questions that have debatable rather than black and white answers. There are more fundamental concepts in SEO that don’t have these shades of gray. One thing that’s great about the particular questions asked though is that they’ve started a dialogue about those topics. And not only about the topics in the quiz, but about the larger topic of search engine optimization as an art, trial and error, and ever-evolving. So in that sense, perhaps the quiz was [almost] completely right.
While I agree with you, technically I agree for a different reason. For your argument to be valid you would have to remove the phrase from the title tag on every page of your site as well.
It does indirectly pass benefit however, since often times “natural” linking involves using the URL as the anchor text.
Nice assessment of the quiz btw, thank you.
More than one person followed up on the SEOmoz site, pointing out there were many wrong answers. It’s always a risk, when you create a “quiz” or self-test, that you’ll reveal you know far less about the topic than the people you’re trying to help.
It was a brave bit of link bait but the SEOmoz quiz is filled with so many wrong points of view it only underscores just how far they have yet to go in learning to understand search engine optimization.
No offence to Rand & co, but at 75 questions, was far too long.
I reached no.17 – a hypothetical about link value passed when Page 2 is linked to more than once from Page 1. I didn’t agree with any answers provided, and that’s when I noticed how many questions there were left to go through!
Hi Vanessa,
Even with the “theoretical” questions, and the couple of outright “huh?” answers, it still rocks. It may at times seem more of a test of SEO “current events”.
But you know what the reality of SEO is? There are no absolutes. Very few black and white answers to any question in SEO.
The quiz is what any such quiz can be… A gaugue of current theories and general best practices.
I totally thought of 410 too. Guess I am geek
It is great to get you take on this so thanks or writing this.
Somewhere in Montreal a Fishkin tear is falling…
Aw, Rebecca. He knows I still love you all.
Vanessa, you beat me to it… I was planning on going through the Q&As and doing a post like this.
Glad you are the bad guy (or girl).
Rand knows we love him, but some of these Qs are “art” indeed.
Barry, you should still do a post! And I don’t think it’s being the bad guy. Rand even updated his blog post to say that the debate of disagreeing with the answers adds value to the quiz. It’s all just friendly discussion.
“When launching a large amount of new content on a new or existing domain, the best way to release content for crawling and indexing is:”
I got the wrong right answer on that one too, and had issues with a number of others. However, I ended up with a halfway decent score, and maybe that means the big stars in the emerald city will lavish leads upon little me in the hub of the universe. (It was kind of a slow summer.)
It should also be called the SEO SATs, because 75 questions is way more than a quiz.
I made it to question 5 before I realized I couldn’t spend the time to take a test for the heck of it. Since it’s suppose to be a learning experience it would have been nice to have the answer show immediately. At least I would feel like I’m gaining something as I move along.
Thanks Vanessa for this debunking post. I did the quiz with 28% disagreement only because I guessed a few expected answers correctly by knowing where they came from. Otherwise SEOmoz would have been wrong with 50% or so of their answers just because they didn’t provide the right answer at all. When I read the last page I decided not to sphinn it. However, that’s nice link bait, and without the authority claim it would have got a link on the fun page from yours truly.
“Somewhere in Montreal a Fishkin tear is falling…”
Yeah, but he’ll see the link to the quiz, and that will dry his eyes up real fast. Links make any day a bright one.
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Vanessa, you’re the bad guy!
Overall, I’d say it was a fairly decent test, though certainly with some flaws. Yes, there were some shaky questions that I either disagree with, or believe that none of us hold the clear answer to. I also think it would be impossible to create a perfect SEO test, simply because things change too often, and there are too many unknowns. Still, it wouldn’t be too terrible to use the questions as a guideline when teaching someone about SEO. BTW, I scored an 85%, which gave me the title of SEO Master. (I think SEO Mistress might be the better term, though).
Chris hit my problem with it, the length — I got through about 35 questions and cried uncle.
Vanessa, I didn’t see your title before my comments above.
Barry, what about SEO is fact? So friggen little.
Don’t know why I am so worked up about this, but I am. Seems an attack on a person and a brand, not “friendly discussion”.
Hi Vanessa,
At the risk of getting killed – yes I know it was you who killed me in the game; I think the words “completely wrong” are extreme. What ever happened to “grey”? Does everything have to be “black or white”. Ok maybe at Google but elsewhere, there has to be grey.
As for the moving of content, I agree wholeheartedly that it should be done in “large chunks”, once verified what you are doing is correct, especially if you are doing it by editing .htaccess enmass. In fact I am assuming this was out of context since, I know , in consultation with another venerable Googler, Rand and I had this discussion over moving and consolidating all our sites under one domain (not for the faint of heart) and it was decided we would do it all at once.
Ok so the guy in the yellow shoes may not be omnipotent, he is trying to put a degree of legitamacy behind the “art” and add just a bit of science into the mix.
I have not seen the Quiz but this is a great post Vanessa – lots of basic SEO review here, and perhaps most importantly you continuously note that the landscape is very dynamic and changes … constantly, making most attempts to state specific “rules of SEO” questionable.
You’re upset Pat, because you love Rand, and you’re taking this far more personally than he would even do. That’s OK — you look up to him, have learned a lot from him and want to watch out for him.
Vanessa and Rand know each other well, so no, I don’t read it at all as her attacking him. Attacking the quiz in particular and quizzes in general, sure. And good for her.
To me, a quiz gets you thinking that there’s one true correct answer to everything in SEO. As Vanessa has explained, that’s so not the case. And if you talk more with Rand, I think you’d find he’d actually agree, as well. I thought she was right on with saying this is more of whether you agree with an SEOmoz philosophy and believe of SEO. There are going to be plenty of experienced and skilled SEOs that don’t agree. And that’s fine, too — because it is not a cut and dried activity.
Ironically, the origin of “cut and dried” itself apparently isn’t cut and dried:
http://www.word-detective.com/back-r.html
Cut lumber? Cut firewood? Cut tobacco? What, no mention of beef jerky?
“It was a brave bit of link bait but the SEOmoz quiz is filled with so many wrong points of view it only underscores just how far they have yet to go in learning to understand search engine optimization.”
Um, excuse me Michael Martinez, but that is a huge load of crap. You’re implying that we at SEOmoz don’t understand SEO, and that we have a long way to go before we can even LEARN how to understand it. Even coming from you I find it to be outrageous, offensive, ridiculous, and just plain wrong.
Pat, I posted this on Sphinn, but thought I should comment here as well. The title is meant to be overly dramatic. A bit of homage to Rand as one of the kings of linkbait.
The folks at SEOmoz obviously know a lot about SEO and I count Rand as a very good friend of mine.
I meant it all in friendly fun.
I take back the 50% because there’s so much gray. “Or so” should have covered it, but posting a percentage at all was inaccurate.
Hey, Vanessa and Danny, thanks for your interaction, but we disagree on this one
I do not and can not represent Rand or SEOmoz in any way whatsoever.
This is just me and my opinion and my feelings. No one elses. I found the title and the opening paragraph of your sphinn intro hurtful and shitty.
I also think you are both wonderful, intelligent, people who I admire and respect and look up to.
There actually is a reason I am so worked up. I in fairness I will write about it and get it too you two or just post it or something.
I officially stop protesting
*** When launching a large amount of new content on a new or existing domain, the best way to release content for crawling and indexing is: ***
I believe that either Matt Cutts or GoogleGuy posted either on WMW or on Matt’s Blog that the new content should be released in chunks of a few tens of thousands of pages at a time. The post was probably some 4 to 8 months or more ago (but my memory might be wonky).
I can’t agree with several of the answers, but overall the quiz did a reasonable job. One question introduced a minor factor that I had never even thought about.
Several questions are definately up for more debate and are not a “universal truth”. A couple of questions could do with an improvement in the clarity of the wording (like the 404 one and a few others). One had several double negatives in it.
It will be interesting to see the stats as to how many people chose each answer, and maybe even see a Mk II test in a month or two.
Good post!
I have to agree with Vanessa – if you regularly read SEOmoz articles, you have an advantage – even if you might disagree with the answer, you know the answer SEOmoz is looking for.
Perhaps providing a text box at the end of the quiz (or at the end of each question) where you can provide direct input could be quite a valuable resource (i.e. content) for SEOmoz and also help release user frustration
Regardless, I think it’s a great product and from my comments on SEOmoz, you can probably tell I enjoyed it immensely. I’m looking forward to the next iteration (it’s not the first SEOmoz quiz and I’m sure it won’t be the last).
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Hey Vanessa,
Like Pat, I take issue not with your actual comments about the quiz but at how you presented them. There were definitely some gray areas which Rand & Co. presented as hard & fast answers, but on the whole it was a noble attempt to separate wheat from chaff in the SEO world. Clearly if folks like DazzlinDonna are scoring “only” 85% there are some problems with it, but to say it’s “completely wrong” is a bit over the top.
This is a serious question: does SEMPO or any other similar community have a similar quiz? If not, I say we applaud this one as a great first effort at A) letting relatively new SEOs like myself know where we stand in relation to the rest of the industry and B) putting some of the snake-oil salesmen in their place by coming up with some sort of REAL barometer of SEO skill.
David, I appreciate the education effort, I do. But let’s be clear. If you are a relatively new SEO, this was a terrible, terrible quiz for you to know where you stand. There were a ton of basic questions not covered. You’ve got a few questions not related to the techniques of SEO at all. You’ve got many questions where there’s going to be real conflict about what’s correct — and that doesn’t help the new SEO assess anything. They’ll just think they’re wrong if the test says they’re wrong. SEMPO actually does training rather than quizzes. There’s been a big trend recently toward various places trying to offer training and “accreditation.” I guess I’m old school in the end by thinking the best accreditation tends to be your client recommendations.
Danny, thanks for replying. You would certainly know better than I about the need for more basic questions on the quiz & I did see a few that were not related to the PRACTICE of SEO at all (the book that you referenced on your own post @ SEL, where the term PageRank came from, who patented what, etc).
I’m not necessarily saying that SEMPO should do a 75-question quiz & thereafter brand that person as a “qualified” SEO. But I do think that the SEO community as a whole could help its reputation problem w/some sort of objective criteria to rate its practitioners. Most professional fields DO offer degrees or certification upon the satisfactory completion of particular tests. Even Google does it with Adwords Qualification. Maybe it’s not a test per se; maybe it’s a peer-rating system, or a hybrid of the two. Or something different altogether.
Also, I’m not looking at this entirely from the SEO’s perspective of validating his/her business, I’m trying to look at it from the client perspective as well. I 100% agree that client recommendations are by far the best “accreditation,” but those don’t really help prospective clients who barely know where to begin with online marketing, and who have no idea what separates good SEOs from bad ones. ANYONE can list client recommendations on his/her site…
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Holy crap! Theres so much info within this post and comments. I do have to say that I agree w/ Vanessa in regards to Rand’s quiz, I took it and , there were many questions that were ambiguous at best. Although, I do applaud the effort , even if it was for links =)
@ Danny, word! Client references and tangible results do the trick for me too! Although, we all obviously like a good quiz for entertainment.
Yep, all good points, David. But to clarify, when I say client recommendations, I mean that someone who wants to hire an SEO should ask for recommendations, then call those people and get opinions. That’s also like what happens in other industries — you get recommendations and follow-up with them.
I agree with Vanessa being right about SEOmoz being wrong and the Quiz being wrong about the wrong questions it asked and … I’m right!
That test is not a test you could consider representative to compare to SEOs or even check your own value.
I went half the way and closed it. Found a question about a book … omg … I’m not American. That does not apply to me! Make these tests worldwide compatible next time and I’ll happily take them.
That test should have been called: “Check how much attention you pay when you read SEOmoz everyday!?!?”. Simple!
Cheers.
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“completely wrong” when you only argued with 6 questions is a bit much, but in the spirit of linkbait…
I’ve gone through the quiz, paid careful attention to your criticism (along with Danny’s and many people’s in the comments around the web) and hopefully have a better product. And, shit, it’s only like, 1:41am here in Montreal. Thank goodness I don’t have to write a blog post, reply to 20 more emails and deliver a keynote in the morning… Now that would suck. Oh wait…
LOL, well didn’t you get the pot stirred on this post.
I love watching the SEO industry. A lot of salespeople determined to make sure they are right all the time. I attended SES for the first time last month. I was hoping to get definitive answers on a number of difficult questions but the answer I received in the end is that SEO is like Christianity. The basics things you should do are fairly consistant but if you peel back too many layers of the onion all of a sudden there is ‘proof’ to many different theories. All correct in their own right but all wrong as well. Each religion can pull out a line of scripture to justify their answer as correct just as any decent SEO can find a blog, forum, newsgroup, or case study for their decision.
Vanessa, fine job in having the clout and balls to create such a post. I am a bit shocked that so many people are ranting about it. Sure you were strong worded but look at the tone of the rest of your blog. Hell, the domain alone is a reflection of your personality. It’s Vanessa people, chill a little and go watch a Buffy episode. I doubt she has any ill-feelings towards any of you–and I have never even met her (though I did evesdrop on a conversion she had with a couple of you at SES, lol).
David Payne
I got 110%. Seems spot on to me.
I just stopped when you A)Spot an answer that is right, but B)Know just because it’s seomoz what the “correct” answer will be… and it’s not the one you identified in A).
I love it how there is a nice juicy link to seomoz just above the comment about the the test being “completely wrong”.
I think their goal was achieved here
Good thing he didn’t do the quiz before the whole paid links debate kicked off then
Like people have said before, I have to applaud Rand for the development of these quizes, as I would suggest he is one of the more vocal SEO’ers out there (danny, barry et all excepted).
These quizes however don’t disguse the fact as Dave M has intimated at, at the lack of such professional accreditation.
However I would unlike Danny S suggest there is room for room accredition in some form (not neccesarily in the strictest sense of the word), for SEO, if not to sort out the wheat from the chaf. The following post on our blog puts my thoughts about this in more detail (in response to Dave N’s earlier post – point 2)
http://www.e-gain.co.uk/blog/5-things-i-would-do-if-i-were-google/2007/09/12/
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Exactly and this is why it is smart to spend little time visiting SEOmoz.
Develop your own style and understanding or become a mindless drone.
Bunch of know it alls… proven wrong in many ways once again, thanks Vanessa.
You can’t give me any thumbs down in here! =P
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Next time SEOmoz guyz don’t do tests for in-house use and then leak them to the rest of us.
Good thing I never reached the end …
And Vanessa did the right thing! What if someone who ranked 10% jumped off the window due to a nervous breakdown? Vanessa had to tell people not to measure their values based on the results of this irrelevant test. We SEO are very competitive and don’t take loss easily.
But you got what you needed: links and attention (maybe some extra bucks).
Nice!
PS: Next time allow people to jump back to questions to name it a real test.
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I posted my comments on Sphinn, because I had a lot and the length of this page was starting to look like an SEOmoz post: http://sphinn.com/story/5274
BTW, I received a 184/257 (73%) is that decent?
Here are the questions I missed that I am not going to dispute:
1, 3, the new 6 (though all answers should be marked as correct–it was obviously comic relief), 14, 21, 26, 43, 44, 52, 62, 68, 69, and 74.
Here are the questions I have some comments on:
#30) I said no effect, but now that it might help to have spammy sites . . .
I’m be sarcastic but how many others will be serious? Even if it’s true they shouldn’t have included it.
#42) Again their answer only promotes reciprocal linking spam. Shouldn’t have called it out.
#46) I said False and their explanation was very precise. Good take-away.
#53) I said CSS layers. I am having our web designer and programmer work on this next week. Good take-away.
#66) I said Global link popularity (but I thought that was wrong too). They state that keyword density has nothing to do with relevance? I highly disagree. I can prove it to some extent too because all dead OneCall.com product pages use to 301 to a product category page and Google would toss us out of the top 40 on a top 10 result as soon as they reindexed the page. However, now that we changed the availability display on the page and keep the product page alive we maintain our rank.
#70) Disagree. Case in point is OneCall.com’s partnership with Buy.com. We have relevant anchor text links to our product page from several different spiderable sections of their site and it did nothing for our page rank when we launched that partnership. However, as we add more and more affiliates (in-house program and we 301 redirect out the parameter so Google can’t tell they are affiliates) our page rank is getting higher and higher. When we launch a smokin’ deal, and the affiliates post it, our SEO goes up as soon as all the pages are reindexed (affiliate pages and product page on OneCall).
Last complaint . . .let me know where I rank against other test takers. I got a C- but what did everybody else get?
P.S. Is 73% enough to land me an SEM job?
David Payne
Biz Dev/SEM
OneCall
Good lord, people. With all the time you’ve spent crafting your complaints and replies, you could have all made quizzes of your own.
Well, Jane, that’s traditionally been SEOmoz’s niche of date — doing the quizzes. So you have people commenting and giving SEOmoz the respect of a reply because they’re trying to help you. Hopefully, it’s not viewed as us all being nitpicky.
Great post Vanessa. While I am a regular on the moz, I do think that many people can get too caught up in the WWRDOS (What Would Rand Do or Say) way of thinking.
I think you hit it spot on when you say:
“It’s impossible to know everything about SEO because some things aren’t hard and fast rules.”
Totally off, and looks like th backend is messed up too. It shows that you got answers wrong, but then gives you same answer as a correct answer…weird?
Vanessa,
Shame on you . . . you altered your blog title.
David
David, yes but I postscripted at the end of the post about it!
I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say that quizzes are SEOmoz’s niche (I don’t think we’ve done one in a while), although SEOmoz has definitely always had success with the linkbait in general.
SEOMoz has been created very quality Quiz for any people who think he/she was a Master. Event only answer 49 correct question, i’m very satisfied, that means i must more and more learn from the expert.
SEO is loook like an art, different people different result. So dont blame the creator, this just a quiz nothing else
C’mon folks… I can’t believe you fell for it. Of course it can’t be accurate, a lot of SEO is subjective. The only thing that really matters is results, everything else is pretty much R&D or speculation. Trust me, I’d rather have a “know how” SEO than a “test passing” SEO any day work for me.
Rand, great job on the link bait – it worked!
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Great points, Vanessa. I do think that there are a number of questions that may go into the art rather than the science of SEO.
I did have a problem with the following one, which I thought had a black and white answer, and an incorrect answer one on the quiz. I’m disclosing the answer so that people won’t continue to get it wrong as a result of the quiz.
Sorry, Rand. Yahoo originated the use of the term, and followed up with its use in an additional four patent applications. The Google patent (not an application at this time – it has been granted) pointed at has nothing to do with trustrank, and I’m not certain that I’ve ever seen anyone point to it when discussing trustrank.
The citation that I’ve seen most commonly pointed at regarding trustrank is this paper – Combating Web Spam with TrustRank (pdf).
The authors listed on that paper are the named inventors on this Yahoo patent application:
1 Link-based spam detection (20060095416)
The remaining four describe an expansion of the trustrank process, referred to as dual trustrank, which adds elements of the social graph to the use of trustrank.
2 Using community annotations as anchortext (20060294085)
3 Realtime indexing and search in large, rapidly changing document collections (20060294086)
4 Trust propagation through both explicit and implicit social networks (20060294134)
5 Search engine with augmented relevance ranking by community participation (20070112761)
I can’t believe the number of people who have enough time on their hands to take such a long quiz to completion — don’t you guys have clients who would be better served during this time??
Admittedly I tried the test thingy at way past office hours (read 8pm), but after two dozen questions I had to give up out of sheer boredom!
And yea, Vanessa nice post… i agree with the lack of absoluteness bit – like even Google can ever give a straight answer to some of those questions… with SEO I find there’s ALWAYS exceptions to what people consider to be “rules”
I liked it, but mainly because I did well
I agree that some questions felt a little like “what answer does Rand / SEOmoz want you to write for x” but that’s fine ‘cos I love the moz blog and I’m quite good at remembering useless data, so it all added up to a good quiz for me…
Dave Payne:
You said:
I’m be sarcastic but how many others will be serious? Even if it’s true they shouldn’t have included it.”
“#30) I said no effect, but now that it might help to have spammy sites . . .
Unfortunately they are right on this. Alot of spammy sites do give slight link power. Not much but slight. I have seen this many times.
You said:
#66) I said Global link popularity (but I thought that was wrong too). They state that keyword density has nothing to do with relevance? I highly disagree. I can prove it to some extent too because all dead OneCall.com product pages use to 301 to a product category page and Google would toss us out of the top 40 on a top 10 result as soon as they reindexed the page. However, now that we changed the availability display on the page and keep the product page alive we maintain our rank.
Keyword density is not a factor on Google and for good reason. Anybody can make a page with a certain density. I have pages that have 13% keyword density and other pages that have the keyword mentioned once on the page. They both rank very well. Also if you look at the serps for almost any keyword you will find that the keyword density varies greatly.
I agree with most of what they say because it agrees with my own research. I did think a few of the questions may have been wrong but for the most part it is a great quiz.
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My point about question 30 was not whether it worked or not (frankly I have never used link farms nor am I interested) but that they shouldn’t include ‘spammy’ ways to improve one’s SER. All SEOs should have a level of integrity to follow when sharing information with clients. If they specifically ask, that is one thing, but to openly share ‘spammy’ tactics. It’s just not right.
As for keyword density . . . I still don’t believe it. We at OneCall.com added the manufacturer, model number, subcategory text in a number of different places on our product details page and we saw an immediate improvement. Furthermore the example about discontinued products being in SERPs versus our redirection to subcategory pages is another example. Search for ‘Panasonic TH-58PX600U’ in Google. You will find that on the first page is a OneCall.com result. We used to be #2 (but whatever) then when we did a 301 to the product category page we fell to 30 . When we simply kept the product page alive and change the availability messaging, we maintained our top ten result. What, other than content, could explain this? I honestly want to learn, so if you know, tell me.
Sorry Vanessa for sucking up your blog, if you feel this is too off topic, feel free to edit it with ‘off topic’ I won’t be offended.
It does underscore though your earlier point that SEO is an art not a science.
David Payne
David, post away! As I noted in my edit, one great thing about the quiz is that it is getting people to talk about the topics.
You are so right about SEO being a little like religion. And I so laughed at your comment about how people should chill and watch Buffy. It is indeed absolutely the case that I may not 100% agree with someone on an SEO question, but that certainly doesn’t cause me to have any ill-will torwards them.
Bill, thanks so much for posting. I thought that was the case, but didn’t have time to dig into it. You, of course, are the master of this kind of thing. Great info.
Buffy?
BB
I think the quiz has been successful from the standpoint that it got us all to take a few minutes to try to see the topic from a bird’s-eye view.
People have made lots of great points re degrees of correctness, degrees of subjectivity, and degrees of difficulty. Even if the consensus is the test itself failed as a true detector of current SEO knowledge, I’m grateful for the attempt.
Oh, and Vanessa? I like to put potato chips (and even french fries) in my sandwiches, too.
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Quiz, what quiz? The only thing that was visible on SEOmoz was a very, very, very long piece of linkbait. If you couldn’t see that, then I would say (no matter your score), you failed.
Hah and I thought I was out of touch for not readng blogs for a day. I took the quiz, got pissed that I missed a handful, and fired up http://www.seoquiz.com to rant about one of the questions.
Then I realized I have way more domains than I can develop…ever…so if anyone wants that one or seo-quiz.com, let me know. In other words, I went back to SEO.
Bill – thanks a ton for the catch. I really appreciate that. Fixed that question, too.
Heh. The trailing slash problem that you mention on your seo-quiz blog, was discussed on Matt Cutts blog just a few days ago. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/useful-google-feature-better-date-search/#comment-112553
They DO treat them as two separate pages. It is down to the server to send to 301 redirect from the non-slash version to the with-slash version. That’s in the Apache docs, and some RFC or other too, I do believe.
Sure, they can hide some of those behind the “similar results” link, but that is down to clustering of results, not due to combination of URLs as representing the same page. This also occurs with similar titles and/or similar meta description data as in: http://www.threadwatch.org/node/8222#comment-43362 and following comment.
After a long hiatus from reading blogs on SEO/M, I come back to such an excellent and controversial post! I am glad V is still commenting on SEO/M as I have found her insights useful in the past.
I do also find SEOmoz a useful reading ground, and their collections of free tools are great for redirecting friends and small businesses who want to take on their own SEM.
In particular I dont have much to say about the quiz or the post – so much ground has been covered on and off this site!!!
I would love to know what percentage of link love both SEOmoz and Vanessa’s blog attained as a result of this post…
I suspect SEOmoz received a higher percentage since this post went live – as it got more people talking online about both the quiz and the critique and as a result refrencing both the sites.
A beautiful example of how a controversial post can be one of the quickest ways to be linked to – although of course if the two werent as well known and respected… people would have been less likely to take note…
Personally, I think this was a brilliant marketing campaign – irrespective of any short comings with the actual survey.
John, you began posting on a new domain because of our linkbait? Really?
“John, you began posting on a new domain because of our linkbait? Really?”
Yes, Jane. Really. Thanks for bringing yet another undeveloped domain to the front burner, if only for 5 minutes. I’ve been checking the page rank ever since I launched it… not sure what’s taking so long. Still hopeful, though. I could use another PR2 site for my network after Google upped the ante for reciprocals.
Tough to be an SEO these days… no rest for the weary. Maybe I should publish a quiz?
Excellent post, Vanessa. I agree. I got 1 or 2 “objective” answers wrong, but on some of the answers counted wrong, I just went “what???”. Some of the questions were even not as much about seo knowledge but about seo-related news such as which site was recently banned and / or lost its ability to pass pagerank. That’s not as much seo knowledge as having read up on the 90 subscriptions in your rss reader…
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Potato chips in sandwiches rule!
Oh the moving target that is SEO…fantastic post. My only hope is that this did not ruin Buffy night, that would be a shame.
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I know what they were thinking of when they wrote “cut and dried” instead of whatever phrase they should have used.
No wonder the wording on the questions seemed a tad rushed. The methodology itself has a few holes as well, but it was a good start.
Lets see what happens with seo quiz 2.0 Rand.
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geeeezeeeeee. I think I’ll have to check out Vanessa’s blog more than once a month from now on. LOL
I took the text… all the way. I’m agreeing with Vanessa for the most part, but with a few “if’s”.
Rand’s biggest mistake; …assigning a number for a percentage of questions he says you got “right”. In my mind the quiz/text was not either right or wrong… but almost entirely based on: … the CONTExT of the questions and what the heck is going on with the exact site at the exact time. Too many of the questions would need “more info” before writing a good answer, and even then would need more than a checkbox, but would need a “text” box to write an essay in.
Sure; I thought a few did not have the right questions listed, but then, I’m not in Rand’s head at the time he wrote down the question. Too many things about this stuff that one quiz cannot cover. Some very basic basic stuff was not asked at all. Too much stuff was asked that you cannot possibly know exactly unless you have more information. A few other questions I could not follow at all… bad grammar or something…don’t know…..or maybe it is because of not sleeping the other night.
The point is, the quiz was a quiz was a test that wasn’t a text or a quiz. It was a question and answer on how one assesses this “SEO” stuff. We all assess things differently depending on the exact site. No one size fits all. I don’t think the quiz was wrong, nor do I think it was right. I actually can’t believe Rand wrote something like this to begin with. I thought I would be the only one to do such a thing. lol
But I do take away this; those of you who say you got 90% or above some other percent; don’t put much into that figure at all please.
btw; kudos to Rand for even attempting this.
Something planned for later, but will only have about 20 very “crisp” questions that will not be much either/or, but will involve paragraph type answers with no right or wrongs at all. Getting to know how one goes about things is the key to this stuff. You really can’t frame this stuff in a testLike way, so no; SEMPO or any other org cannot make up a “test” for SEO. It’s useless at best.
Well said Vanessa. Perhaps it isn’t that great that I did well on that quiz
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This gets confusion when two people from that work from Google give different information. I strongly think the fault to some of these questions is mis-information from Google staff..
the question:
When launching a large amount of new content on a new or existing domain, the best way to release content for crawling and indexing is:
A video I watched recently suggests that it’s best to add content in smaller chunks(this video was from matt cutts himself).
There is no art or science involved in search engine optimization it’s more how about how you earn those links.
WHere cut and dried comes from:
http://tribes.tribe.net/etymologydorks/thread/19c4c702-3774-4aef-ae19-e371f2b18d97
Had to do with food.
As to whether internal linking boosts PR. If the link is going to increase the likelihood of someone visiting that page, then yes. PR=the likelihood of a random surfer visiting a page, no? Put a link, you increase the likelihood (assuming you’re not hiding your internal links…). Similarly why footer links help but only marginally. So for those people releasing WP themes… you need volume for that strategy to work!
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Funny, I posted a similar type of comment about it being a semi-slanted test, except not quite as harsh
seoMOZ expert?
I guess maybe it should be more about a community feedback test where experts can give feedback on the test, instead of just basing in on their own random blog articles. I lot of the questions seem to be more about gut feel than actual, multiple long-term studies.
Can we make a new test together called
“The cut and dried, black and white seo test (because SEOMOZ didn’t make the grade)”
and we can have a second test called
“The SEO rumor mill test–it aint true, but we would like to think that it was cause we overheard someone say something about it once”
Maybe get 4 or 5 Q&A’s from various SEO niche experts out there (and we can incentive the experts to do it and promote it)–you wanna do this? contact me.
I have to learn more and more about SEO. After answer the quiz, I know there’s a lot of things to do to improve my skill
These points are very valid even almost a year after you wrote them. SEO is an art and science that evolves and changes over time. It is impossible to know everything about SEO, only continue to learn and evolve with the trends that are relevant.
I’ve always have doubt with Alexa. I’m new in SEO though, Have to learn more on this complicated science
I wasted a whole lot of time giving this test (75 questions!…i felt like i was giving an entrance exam) Many of the questions, as you mentioned, were not exactly answerable.
Potato chips in sandwiches rule!