Damper on-page SEO to improve results?

[Lyle]

Hi there guys

Sorry for including a link to another forum but here is just too much said in this thread for me to quote.

http://forums.seochat.com/google-optimization-7/google-test-remove-h-and-alt-tags-88293-2.html

Have a look at it and then I would like to hear your guys opinion.

Lyle

[Paz]

Hi Lyle,

Welcome to the forum!!!

Unusual to have a first post with a link to another search engine marketing forum, but we're quite friendly here.... LOL

It's a good thread though, I read it through and it was very interesting. I'd heard similar claims before but I've always been a bit sceptical that adding <h1> tags etc. can put a dampener on a page; by setting an SEO flag.

This guy appears to have seen his rankings improve after removing them though. What I'd like to see now is for him to put the <h1> tags back up and see if they drop back down again. The reason why is that rankings can improve due to old links kicking in, and other factors so that the link he's made between the removal of the tags and the ranking improvements could be bogus.

Thinking about it, it wouldn't suprise me if there was a dampener for having identical <title> and <h1> tags, maybe that could trip a filter....

Interesting stuff.

Cheers,
Paz.

[Blazingpie]

This is interesting, and worth an experiment, though Id prefer to see it done when Google's not going through a "bad data push" (ie, monumental balls-up :p)

Hmmm... I think when i get a chance I'll try it out on a not-that-important site to see what happens.

Id like to see a rather wide-ranging test done over many different sites in many industries and at different ranking strengths, in order for it to be more comprehensive :)