A forum member have posted this amazing information, so you can use it for future reference.
I have 250 webpages that use a globally unique keyword in a different way on each page testing all HTML tags, attributes, and request entities. I query google for my secret keyword and Google kindly sorts them for me in order of most valuable to least valuable. Then I deploy the knowledge on the $20M/year retail website I work for.
I should probably add that this data goes stale… google changes it a little bit each quarter. My theory is that they do statistical analysis of web spam trends and tweak their algorithm at the interval. (which is why I believe deprecated tags do so well) I have been watching it now for going on 2 years. This is today’s rankings, but three months from now it wont be valid at all.
Title has only been de-throwned once and that was by blockquote some time ago… it didn’t last long… only a couple months. Don’t act on this list 3 months from now and “sure as shit” don’t ever follow boilerplate white hat advice that is regurgitated everywhere… its the fastest way to tune yourself out of the SERPs. H1 tags (41st)? Meta description(51st)? Link Text (45th)? MySelf (1st prize!)! Well maybe in 1995.
- Link to relevant websites is WAY more valuable than it used to be.
- blockquote finally demoted from top 5 to 27. ouch!
- h1 makes a comeback! … but is still more than half way down the list.
- p makes a comeback! Span, Div, A, H1-6 are on the decline!
- 40+ tags fall from the test SERPs! Which probably means there may be a new factor or limitation in play for sites.
- I am surprised to see HTML comments made the cut when so many other tags did not. Still not worth much priority though.
- SERP Quirking is back! Use caption to get multiple links for same page.
Rank/Placement
01 title: Defines the title of a page. You must have a title element to produce a valid document and it must be placed within the head element.
02 samp: Sample. Defines sample output, from a computer program for example.
03 acronym: Defines an element that is made up of the first letters of the words of a phrase such as ‘CSS’. The title attribute is generally used to specify the whole word or phrase that the abbreviation is referring to. An acronym is also an abbreviation, but an abbreviation is not necessarily an acronym.
04 linking to relevant pages: “link from your webpage to someone else’s webpage on the subject” AND yes that means you can rank for a keyword without using it in your source , but it is often difficult to be competitive. Linking to other pages that rank for the terms you are tuning for is VERY strong in google’s equation right now.
05 a.href: Anchor. Primarily used as a hypertext link. The link can be to another page, a part of a page or any other location on the web.
06 p: A new Paragraph.
07 pre: Preformatted text. Text where the whitespace (that is normally discarded by other elements) is as much a part of the content as the rest of the text. Commonly used to display computer code because it maintains nesting indentations.
08 inside a textarea: A multi-row text area form element. The initial value of the text area can be placed in between the opening and closing tags.
09 kbd: Keyboard. Used to define text that should be typed in by the user.
10 caption: Defines a caption for a table. It must appear straight after the opening table tag and used only once.
11 small: b (bold), i (italic), tt (teletype), sub (subscript), sup (superscript), big, small and hr (horizontal rule) are all presentational tags. As such, their use should be avoided and CSS used instead.
12 code: Defines code (such as computer code).
13 strong: Strong emphasis.
14 sub
15 u: Underlying any text.
16 center: centering your text or images.
17 cite: Defines an in-line citation or reference to another source.
18 big
19 font: Any type of font.
20 bdo: Bi-directional text. Defines an element that has different directional content. This is usually used with languages that are read in a different direction to the default language. For example, if Hebrew were used in an English document, it would need to be defined as being read from right-to-left.
21 em
22 legend: Defines a caption for a fieldset. The element must appear directly after the opening fieldset tag.
23 button
24 table > thead > tr > td
25 abbr: Defines an element that is a shortened word or phrase, such as ‘HTML’. The title attribute is generally used to specify the whole word or phrase that the abbreviation is referring to. An acronym is also an abbreviation, but an abbreviation is not necessarily an acronym. Note: The abbr tag is not recognised in Internet Explorer.
26 address: Defines contact information, such as an address or a signature.
27 blockquote: A large quotation. The content of a blockquote element must include block-level elements such as headings, lists, paragraphs or div’s.
28 caption
29 div
30 span: Used to group in-line HTML. span applies no meaning and is commonly used solely to apply CSS.
31 del: Deletion. Used to define an editorial deletion of content. Often used along with ins.
32 ul > li
33 strike
34 ins: Insertion. Used to define an editorial insertion of content. Often used along with del.
35 sup
36 dfn: Definition term. The title attribute is often used to describe the definition.
37 body: The main body of an HTML document where all of the content is placed. You must use this element and it should be used just once. It must start immediately after the closing head tag and end directly before the closing html tag.
38 tt
39 table > tr > td
40 dt: Definition term. Used in conjunction with dl to define a definition list and dd, to define the description linked with the term.
41 h1
42 i this is an “i” example. which is similar to em.
43 s
44 h3
45 a
46 img.alt
47 select > option
48 object > param.name
49 object > param.value
50 input.value
51 (meta:keywords).content
52 (meta:description).content
53 (meta:author).content
54 URL
55 b: Similar to “strong” here is an example
56 HTML comments
If you want a little help about html tags you can read the following resources:
HTML Dog Tag references & W3Schools HTML Tags both sites are great reference and help.
So let me get this straight – you recommend that we all start using the <|samp|> tag in our content? Is this serious?
Totally serious. I’m not recommending anything. This is empirical data. (but my SEO growth percentages at work have been in the high double digits and lower triple digits for the past ten months and this was one of tools I used. When blockquote outranked title last year I switched all the product headings from h1 tags to styled blockquotes. The impact was measured in revenue about 2 weeks later (on 9 well aged and established sites with PR7-8).
It also helped us tune above a few sites we had been struggling with in the SERPs, but it changes often enough (quarterly) that if you don’t build your own empirical test tool you can’t compete. I have an SEO test lab and budget for doing this kind of work and just though I’d share the data with the community that helped me see the truth in SEO… the truth being… its false until proven and the only person who can prove it to you is yourself. Please feel free to build your own version of the experiment.
I share my secret word with people who share their’s. Sometimes result vary based on the incarnation of the tests so having more test beds is very beneficial. After about 6-10 months google test beds start having very similar tag rankings. It appears the rank value of tags may vary with site age… meaning some tags are less trustworthy on newer sites (or so it would appear). That is why I couldn’t possibly tell you what to do with this data. You can look at sites who out rank you and see if content tuning will make the difference and share the results.
