Straight from the Lab: SEO’s Hot Theory Test Results Revealed

SEO’s Hot Theory Test Results Revealed

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@melpetulla @kgblanchette@Merkle
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Today’s Presenters
Melody Petulla
Senior Manager, SEO, Merkle
@melpetulla
Kyle Blanchette
Data Analyst, Botify
@kgblanchette

Agenda
• Testing Methodology & Definitions
• Test Results
• SEO Strategy Takeaways

Testing Methodology
Methodology
• Data pulled from:
• Botify crawl data
• Server log data
• Organic visit data from Google Analytics
• Google Search Console Data
• Some analyses are from individual case studies and may
not represent industry-wide trends.
• Where possible, data was combined across multiple sites
similar in size and vertical.
• Industry-wide insights are pulled from Botify’s study of
270 sites presented at SMX Paris:
• https://www.slideshare.net/BotifySEO/how-does-google-
crawl-the-web-botify-at-smx-paris-2018
Theories
1. Internal Linking
2. Mobile
3. Page Speed
4. Rich Snippets
5. Content Length
6. JavaScript
7. Crawling
Watch the full presentation at merkleinc.com

Testing Terminology
Definitions
Active Pages – At least 1 organic click in last 30 days
Not Active Pages – No traffic in last 30 days
Active Pages Ratio – Proportion of active to non-active pages
PageRank - Botify’s calculated metric of importance based
on size and authoritativeness of internal link profile
Frequency - Number of days with crawls from Google in a 30
day period
Inlinks – Internal links pointing to a given page

© 2017 Merkle. All Rights Reserved. Confidential
Internal Linking Theories:
1. Pages with more links pointing to them are crawled more often.
2. Pages with more links pointing to them rank higher.
3. Pages with more links pointing to them are more likely to receive organic traffic.
4. Pages with more prominent links pointing to them rank higher.
5. Exact match anchor text hurts rankings.

Theory: Pages with more links pointing to them are more likely to be crawled.
Result: Pages with more links are crawled more often!

Theory: Pages with more links pointing to them rank higher.
Result: Pages with the most inlinks rank highest on average.
However, pages with few inlinks can also rank well at times.

Theory: Pages with more links pointing to them are more likely to receive organic traffic.
Result: Pages with more inlinks are more likely to receive organic traffic.
Additionally, pages with few to no links are unlikely to receive traffic.
0.4% 33%

Theory: Pages with more prominent links pointing to them rank higher.
Result: Average position and the likelihood to receive traffic both go up
with the strength of the internal link profile.

Theory: Exact match anchor text hurts rankings.
Result: Pages with a lack of anchor text variation are less likely to receive traffic.

Internal Linking Takeaways
Learnings
1. More inlinks  Crawled more often
2. Prominent inlinks  More likely to receive
traffic, higher rankings
3. Weak internal link profile  Unlikely to
receive traffic
SEO Takaways
✓Flatten site architecture by incorporating a
variety of authoritative navigation
structures and linking modules.
✓Link to the top traffic-driving pages via the
most authoritative links available.
✓Use a variety of anchor text to avoid poor
ranking signals.
✓Eliminate island pages and add links
pointing to pages with fewer than 25
inlinks.

@melpetulla @kgblanchette@Merkle© 2017 Merkle. All Rights Reserved. Confidential
Mobile Theories:
1. Mobile pages that are not similar to their desktop pages perform worse.
2. Mobile-first index is happening.

Theory: Mobile pages that are not similar to their desktop pages perform worse.
Result: Mobile similarity to desktop does not appear to influence a page’s
mobile performance.

Theory: Mobile-first index is happening.
Result: Mobile-first indexing has not yet rolled out for most sites.

Mobile Takeaways
Learnings
1. Mobile/desktop parity does not appear to
be a ranking factor (yet).
2. Mobile-first indexing has not yet started
rolling out broadly. There is still time to
prepare!
SEO Takeaways
✓Prioritize mobile site updates to ensure
ranking signals remain strong when
mobile-first indexing rolls out broadly.
✓Preparing rankings signals on mobile sites
takes priority over complete
mobile/desktop parity.
✓Desktop-first indexing is still in effect for
an undetermined amount of time.
Continue to improve desktop sites in
addition to mobile.
✓There is still time to move to responsive
design, which could be less risky.

Page Speed Theory:
1. As long as my page speed is not terrible, I’m in the clear.

Theory: As long as my page speed is not terrible, I’m in the clear.
Result: Load time should not impact the crawl for small sites.
However, slow pages will likely be crawled significantly less often on large sites.

Theory: As long as my page speed is not terrible, I’m in the clear.
Result: For large sites, pages that load in less than 3 seconds are crawled
significantly more often.
The vast majority of pages that take 3 seconds or longer to load are
crawled less than 20% of the time by Google.

Page Speed Takeaways
Learnings
1. Page speed should not impact crawling
for small sites.
2. Slow pages may be crawled less often on
large sites (>10,000 pages).
3. On large sites, pages loading in as few as
3 seconds or longer may be crawled less.
SEO Takeaways
✓Changes take longer to be recognized by
bots on pages that are crawled less often.
✓For slow pages crawled less frequently,
plan ahead to ensure optimizations are
recognized in time for peak seasons.
✓Pages updated frequently should aim for a
page load time of less than 3 seconds.
✓Large sites should prioritize page speed
optimizations for the highest traffic-driving
templates.

Rich Snippet/Structured Data Theory:
The following rich snippets improve CTR:
1. Star Ratings
2. Price
3. Number of Reviews
4. Availability

Theory: Availability rich snippets improve CTR (unless the product is out of stock).
Result: In Stock snippets can improve CTR by 5-10%, and Out of Stock
snippets can decrease CTR by 5-10%.

Theory: Price rich snippets improve CTR.
Result: Data suggests showing price snippets may improve CTR for cheaper items
and decrease CTR for expensive items.
However, factors such as user behavior for items of different prices could be at play.
?

Theory: Star rating rich snippets improve CTR.
Result: 5 star ratings improve CTR significantly, whereas 3-4 star ratings may
be comparable to not showing star rating snippets.
Less than 3 star ratings hurt CTR.

Theory: CTR increases with the number of reviews indicated in the rich snippet.
Result: CTR increases with the number of reviews until the product has at
least ~50 reviews. More than 50 reviews provides diminishing returns.

Rich Snippet/Structured Data Takeaways
Learnings
1. In Stock Snippets  5-10% Higher CTR
Out of Stock Snippets  5-10% Lower CTR
2. Less than 3 Star Ratings  Lower CTR
5 Star Ratings  Higher CTR
3. More Reviews  Higher CTR
>50 Reviews  Diminishing Returns
SEO Takeaways
✓Availability schema is worth implementing
and should improve CTR for in stock
products.
✓Consider removing rating schema for
products with less than 3 star ratings.
✓It’s worth putting the effort in to improve
ratings to 5 stars.
✓Reviews are important to have, but getting
more reviews is less important after at least
50 exist.
✓It’s worth putting the effort in to earn more
reviews if fewer than 30-40 reviews exist.

Content Theories:
1. Longer articles perform better on average.
2. Adding copy blocks to eComm pages improves performance.

Theory: Longer articles perform better.
Result: Longer articles are more likely to receive traffic (up to 5,000 words).
Articles longer than 5,000 words may perform worse than short-form articles.

Theory: Longer articles perform better.
Result: Optimal content length can vary by category.
Fashion articles may perform best with 250 - 1,000 words, for example.

Theory: Adding copy blocks to eComm pages improves performance.
Result: eComm pages containing copy blocks are more likely to get traffic,
even if it contains less than 400 words.

Content Takeaways
Learnings
1. Longer articles  More likely to receive
traffic (up to a point).
2. Articles that are too long may not get
traffic. Cutoff depends on subject.
3. Copy blocks on eComm pages 
more likely to receive traffic.
SEO Takeaways
✓More content is not always better.
✓Optimal content length does exist, but it is
not universal.
✓Analyze your own content performance by
length and subject matter to determine
optimal content length for your site and
scenario.
✓Incorporate length into content planning
once ideal length is determined.
✓Develop copy to incorporate on eComm
pages in a way that is user-friendly. Some
copy is better than no copy.

JavaScript Theories:
1. Since Google can execute JavaScript, using JavaScript should not change how Google
crawls my site.
2. Bing can now execute JavaScript in their crawls.

Theory: Since Google can execute JS, using JS should not change how they crawl my site.
Result: JS-dependent sites are crawled at the same rate as plain HTML sites.

Theory: Since Google can execute JS, using JS should not change how they crawl my site.
JS-Dependent
Site
32
Plain HTML Site
11
XML Sitemap Crawls in the Last 30 Days
Result: On average, Google may rely more on XML Sitemaps to crawl
JS-dependent sites.

Theory: Bing can now execute JavaScript in their crawls.
? Result: Though Bing appears to have the ability to crawl JavaScript, the rarely do.
More investigation needed.
<1%
of Bing’s crawls use
Bing Preview
(JS-rendering user-agent)
Static Assets –
19%
Bing
Crawl Request Breakdown
Plain HTML – 81%
Static Assets –
1%
Plain HTML – 99%
GoogleVS

JavaScript Takeaways
Learnings
1. Crawling rates of JS sites and plain
HTML sites are similar.
2. Google relies on XML Sitemaps to assist
in crawling JS-dependent sites.
3. Early data suggests Bing rarely executes
JS; more testing is needed.
SEO Takeaways
✓JS-dependent sites should prioritize
thorough and regular XML Sitemap audits.
✓Bing may not actually execute your JS.
Provide non JS-dependent signals to
maintain crawlability and strong signals for
Bing.

Crawl Theories:
1. Top performing pages are crawled more often thank low performing pages.
2. Parameter management is a nice to have, but Google can understand parameters well
enough to crawl efficiently without explicit parameter handling rules or canonicals.
3. URLs deeper in the site taxonomy are crawled less frequently.

Theory: Top performing pages are crawled more often than low performing pages.
Result: Pages with avg position on page 1 are crawled significantly more often than
those with avg position on page 2 or 3. Some low-ranking pages are never crawled.
TBD whether or not crawl frequency is a ranking factor.

Theory: Bots understand parameters well enough to crawl efficiently w/o param handling.
Result: Without proper signals such as canonical tags or parameter handling in
Google Search Console, Google will still crawl parameterized URLs excessively.

Theory: URLs deeper in the site taxonomy are crawled less frequently.
Result: URLs deeper in the taxonomy are definitely crawled less
frequently. Some URLs are almost never crawled.

Crawling Takeaways
Learnings
1. A clear relationship exists between
rank and crawl frequency.
2. Lower ranking pages (especially avg rank
>10) are crawled less frequently.
3. Poor parameter handling 
Wasted crawl budget
4. Deeper pages are crawled less frequently.
Some URLs are rarely crawled.
SEO Takeaways
✓If crawl frequency is a ranking factor,
wasted crawl budget could have severe
implications. More testing needed.
✓Improper parameter handling can waste
huge amounts of crawl budget. Use proper
handling to ensure changes on priority
pages are crawled quickly.
✓Flatten site architecture to avoid buried
pages that are rarely crawled.
✓Use XML Sitemap attributes and Last
Modified HTTP headers to indicate pages
that change often.

Q&A
Melody Petulla | Senior Manager, SEO, Merkle | @melpetulla Kyle Blanchette | Data Analyst, Botify | @kgblanchette

Thank you.
Melody Petulla | Senior Manager, SEO, Merkle | @melpetulla Kyle Blanchette | Data Analyst, Botify | @kgblanchette

Watch the full
Straight from the Lab: SEO’s Hot
Theory Test Results Revealed
Webinar on merkleinc.com

Straight from the Lab: SEO’s Hot Theory Test Results Revealed

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Straight from the Lab: SEO’s Hot Theory Test Results Revealed