Been doing some testing with TF. Anyone have any input?

[ericplotz1]

So I have been testing the effectiveness of focusing on boosting TF. I know there is a lot of speculation out there, and many have opinions on TF that may or may not be accurate. The most common one I hear is that TF has no effect on SEO. Well........

I ran a test on one of my affiliate site in a low/med competition niche. My keywords range from 10 searches a month to 20k searches per month. So I started with only social signals. I actually was ranking pretty well with only social signals, and no backlinks at all. My medium comp keywords with the majority monthly searches and obviously the kws that were my focus, slid up to position 30 or so with in 2 months of building the site and no linking and only producing about 50 pages of content. Most of the pages were WooCommerce pages and even those are ranking after removing the affiliate links and directing the WooCommerce product page to a review. (When I started the site I didn't realize my link cloaker didn't work on Woo pages, in case you're wondering)

Well I wanted my site to get a boost so I added 15 blackhat links on pages with high TF. The content was terrible, especially for a 1st tier link.

Needless to say I shot up to the first page for my target keyword and many others, in between position 9 and 6. My TF shot up from a 5 to 29 on the same day all of my keywords began ranking.

Now the question I had to ask was "Did the TF spill off the links and thats what boosted me to pos 9, or did the ranking happen and then the TF jumped?" Only because of the speculation that TF doesn't matter did I wonder this.

Sooooooo I threw 200 social bookmarking and profile links at the site on accident. Didn't realize my money site URL was in the order details when I ordered and intended them to be my 2nd tier. Well my site dropped out of the SEs for my target KWs and my TF plummeted. Coincidence?

Well maybe it was. So what I did then was purchase 400k Xrumer links to blast at the profiles. So 2k links (randomized on the amount per profile to look natural) per profile approxiamately. Some I didn't add but a few links and social bookmarks. Also sent a few social signals here and there. I get my social signals from SocialsBox, as they are extremely cheap. Best in my opinion, excluding the fact that there isn't a drip feed option. Anyone know of anything as cheap as them with a drip system let me know.

So after the the blast I waited a few weeks and:



I am back up to the 2nd page and have been climbing up more and more everyday. Not to mention my trust flow is still absolute sh%t! Would this indicate TF means nothing in terms of ranking or what do you think? Will Majestic be a solid metric to evaluate in the future?

Whats your thoughts?

 

[elcidofaguy]

Interesting results buddy!!!

Here are my thoughts:

All third party metrics are only indicators after all and not part of G's algo... and further can be manipulated... Moz probably being one of the easiest... versus Majestic TF... A good indicator is to divide the TF by CF and the closer you get to the value one also provides an indication of reliability.... However at the end of the day you also need to take a careful look at the actual backlinks of the site which is providing you the link... As well as the actual quality of the site itself i.e. content, internal links, how it ranks on the serps etc...

With regards to your TF going down, but your rankings going back up... You may need to give it more time for Majestics algo to catchup... But even if it doesn't I would say that was okay as TF is aimed at indicating how likely a site is attempting to game the system i.e. how trust worthy is it? So in fact its doing a good job of stating that in your case ....

Curious to know if the original sites based on TF have also gone down as it could be that is a factor.... A person attempting to manipulate TF as a business could point their high value sites to a crappy one, use it, remove, rinse and repeat (not wanting to explain that in detail for obvious reasons lol)... I'm sure you get my point on that...

Overall the best way to judge a site is to see how well it ranks on the serps for its main keywords... If its up their and getting a lot of traffic then you have a solid site and if not then its likely to have been manipulated in cases where third party metrics indicate otherwise... In otherwords use a combined approach and don't rely solely on third party metrics...

Main thing it looks like you're on your way back up.... Let us know how you get on!

 

[ericplotz1]

ericplotz1

Definitely agree with you there. But the accuracy of majestic was obviously very on cue with the crappy irrelevant profile links. And obviously the Xrumer (or any reputable tool) blast was the typical way to go.

Let's see if the TF metric is just lagging updating. Will definitely update this, as the site experiences movement.

And for the ratio CF is 24 TF is 3

I'd say thats a pretty effed up ratio

 

[Christopher II]

Word of advise: stay away from XRUMER and most of Fiverr in general. If your focus is on TF, then limit poor quality links and get high quality links on websites with high TF.

The game is quality, not so much quantity.

Here's my ranking (and staying ranked) for a highly competitive keyword with quality links:

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

I think you missed the entire point of the post.

 

[Christopher II]

Christopher II

Your reply is of zero value? Say something substantive. The OP hasn't isolated the experiment to the TF metric alone. Shooting off an XRUMER blast is kind of the opposite. It's not sustainable. My recommendation is that the OP win high quality links on high TF sites.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

What I meant was he is not looking for long-term ranking success. He is testing what happens with trying to manipulate TF and if there is any correlation to rankings.

Of course Xrumer is going to build low quality links. Just like with Moz's DA metric though you can blast sites with crappy links and manipulate it.

I would never recommend what he is doing for any kind of long-term ranking plan. That would be silly.

Personally, I would never put any focus on TF, DA, or any of the other 3rd party metrics out there. They are just loose indicators, but have no real bearings on rankings. All you have to do is spend 20 minutes looking through SERPs and that becomes pretty obvious.

 

[Christopher II]

Christopher II

Okay, cool. I agree with everything that you've said.

The experiment can be somewhat silly as the Trust Follow metric was designed to decide how trustworthy a link is based on the quality of backlinks pointing to it.

Correct me if I am wrong, but TF is a third party metric: It is not a metric of Google (or any other search engine).

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Yep. It's a 3rd party metric. There are no metrics published by Google anymore.

 

[Danlucy]

I ran a test on one of my affiliate site in a low/med competition niche. My keywords range from 10 searches a month to 20k searches per month. So I started with only social signals. I actually was ranking pretty well with only social signals, and no backlinks at all. My medium comp keywords with the majority monthly searches and obviously the kws that were my focus, slid up to position 30 or so with in 2 months of building the site and no linking and only producing about 50 pages of content. Most of the pages were WooCommerce pages and even those are ranking after removing the affiliate links and directing the WooCommerce product page to a review. (When I started the site I didn't realize my link cloaker didn't work on Woo pages, in case you're wondering)

Increasing links like that can affect ranking in long term? bad for SEO rankings?

 

[ericplotz1]

Word of advise: stay away from XRUMER and most of Fiverr in general.

Who said I was using Fiverr? And I'm blasting a tier 2 (which was actually intended to be my tier 3) with Xrumer from someone I know personally. All in all if the links get me in hot water, I could always remove the profile links (that I have the login to) and start fresh. If I was really worried about the site. Which Im not. THose of us really making the money can afford to build sites and abuse them to test methods. Along with manage my Digital Agency, travel the US meeting with large B2B clients, and telling children like yourself to sit down and hush when adults are speaking.

Either way, this is churn and burn son. I'd rather have 20 churn and burn sites rotating in and out, all making me $400-$4000 a month, then have one authority site. I'm doing both. You don't put your eggs in one basket because they'll get scrambled. My authority sites are all obtaining links naturally with content promotion and outreach.

So as SEOPub touched on sort of, unless you have something to add about TF what are you here for? To show your ranking (which was a screenshot of one keyword) and comment about how we shouldn't use Fiverr. Wonderful advice.............or not, as your post really had no value.

The OP hasn't isolated the experiment to the TF metric alone. Shooting off an XRUMER blast is kind of the opposite. It's not sustainable. My recommendation is that the OP win high quality links on high TF sites.

As SEOPub said, It's a test to manipulate trust and see if rankings followed the TF. That was it. And I'll make some nice affiliate commissions. Already have. The point is, I'm developing a much bigger process then what you or anyone else thinks. I also have another site I'm testing SER blasts for 2nd tier (normally 3rd tier) with manually spun content and specific settings that are spitting out some pretty high quality links. Links that will stand the test of time. I'm even working with a few guys that are banging out first tier quality with SER + Verified lists.

I'm using various web 2.0 creators also amongst many other tools

A case study ranking Web 2's and Videos

And about 20 other studies going.

So the point is, it's not what you use its how you use it. Give two men a pile of the same metal. One will make a ferrari and one will make a tin shed.

 

[PTTed]

How is it that so many of these threads end up in arguments?

It appears to me (quite obviously actually) that Christopher II was actually trying to be helpful and contribute his experienced opinion to the discussion. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

There is no need to belittle the man when he is trying to help. He wasn't rude in his post at all. No need to be rude to him.

In these SEO threads there appears to be a huge amount of unwarranted rudeness. Its bad for the community.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Actually, as long as they do not get personal and stay on topic, I do not think there is anything wrong with an argument in SEO topics. Some of the best and most valuable forum threads I have ever seen were several pages of arguments that had some serious gems come out of them for anyone that was paying attention. Many times "arguments" are much more valuable than the same old boring crap you see posted in SEO forums every day.

Content is king.
Build great content and you will magically attract links.
Why isn't my PageRank improving?
How do I increase my rankings?

Bleh... that is what people should be railing against.

Again, as long as they are not personal attacks which should not be tolerated, a lot of great things can come out of arguments.

If you were referring to me, I was not being rude at all. While what Christoper II posted might seem like solid SEO advice, what I was pointing out was that I think he missed the point of what Eric was trying to do. So his comment, helpful or not in the general sense of SEO, seemed misplaced in this particular thread.

 

[PTTed]

As far as commenting on the TF case study being conducted by the OP......

Here is how I look at it, and this has served me well - your mileage may vary.

I look at Google's version of TF (whatever they call it) as a modifier for PageRank.

As far as I see it, Google is probably handling it one of two ways. Either it is like an on/off switch for whether PageRank flows at all. In that case it would be something like this:

If TF > predetermined amount then pass PageRank otherwise PR=0.0

Or else they apply it with a dampening effect where (FinalPageRank passed through link) = (Previously calculated PageRank) * TF modifier.

In other words it would be

(PRprecalculated) * (TF) = PR actually passed through link

example

(0.236884) * (.486422) = (0.115226)

In that model they could use TF algorithmically to adjust how much PageRank flows through links. And they could also use TF as a spam filter. They could use TF as a spam filter by allowing TF to go to zero or even below zero. If they allowed TF to go to zero or below, then the actual PR of a site with enough spam could reach a negative number thereby de-ranking it way down in the search results and possibly deindexing it at some threshold.

So, I would expect TF to correlate with rankings a little bit. But there would be plenty of exceptions where it does not appear to correlate well at all. And because Majestic most likely isn't using the same trust based algorithm that Google uses (because only Google knows) then any number Majestic tries to assign to websites/pages would be arbitrary anyway.

I just look at it like If TF is higher, then it is somewhat more likely that the links will be trusted and therefore pass more PageRank.

Like I said, it is just how I look at it. I think it helps me understand ranking and search results better.

 

[PTTed]

If you were referring to me, I was not being rude at all.

You were not rude in this thread.

Actually, as long as they do not get personal and stay on topic,

Again, as long as they are not personal attacks which should not be tolerated,

I challenge you to re-read this thread and put yourself in the shoes of Christopher II who is a relatively new member here. Go read the whole thread again and you tell me how it is not personal. He should take it personally because it was personal and very insulting. It got very personal.

And you can tell that this guy is an intelligent guy with some experience. He came here of his own free will and offered a decent contribution and viewpoint. And then he got attacked for it.

When that happens to a new member (or any member), that member is likely to want to say "forget this site". "It isn't worth my time or energy to argue with a bunch of idiots over there when all I tried to do was offer my opinion."

We want to encourage active participation and additional memberships from people like Christopher II. We don't want to piss them off when they are contributing.

I do not think there is anything wrong with an argument

As far as arguments go....

Disagreements and different viewpoints are totally fine. Arguments are not fine. This is not a biker bar. If you are going to disagree with someone, try to be tactful about it. Imagine if you were face to face with the guy and he is bigger than you with forearms like Popeye. How would you explain it to him.

 

[ericplotz1]

ericplotz1

Everyone needs to quit being so darn sensitive. Do you know why ******* (we all know) is one of the biggest forums on IM??? Its because mods nor members "fluff" anything. I think if we stopped allowing the minimalism and fluff, we would become a much more respected forum. Why do we let people comment on threads and provide no value to the thread? I've investigated members here and they have already been banned or embarrassed enough in the other forums to leave, and then they bring their junk here. Are we gonna make this forum better or not????

Christophers post was intended to undermine me, hence the Fiverr comment. Either that or he's incredibly noobish and just wanted to comment, and in that case he should have just kept quiet. I mean, what was the point of his original post? Not to use Fiverr gigs and to boast about the #9 position of ONE keyword.

C'mon man, this is what the forum needs to stop and everything else below it. We've all been warned about Fiverr gigs, and many times on this very forum. I'm sorry but the guy should have just realized he was out of topic here. He didn't answer my question, which was to provide your thoughts on how TF correlated to Ranking. Simple as that.

SEOPub made it very clear what my objective was and Christopher still had to state his assumptions, which if you read the OP, were completely off topic. It's part of the rules of the forum to NOT post useless OR irrelevant content. If I had caught Christophers post before SEOPub commented, it would have been deleted.

 

[Christopher II]

Christopher II

That's exactly what I did. If you don't like perspectives that don't conform to your own, then don't post to a public forum.

 

[Christopher II]

1) You have not isolated your experiment to a single variable. You cannot say what you have done is a direct manipulation of Trust Flow and has only improved Trust Follow, ceteris paribus (all else remaining the same).

2) Trust Follow is not a metric of Google. Google's search algorithm does not consider Trust Flow. Trust Flow is a third party metric to measure the quality of back links pointing to a given link.

As I already stated (kindly), winning links on high Trust Flow websites might be a more accurate experiment for you to monitor the affects that Trust Flow has on your rankings (ie. the passing of trust).

 

[ericplotz1]

ericplotz1

How does this address anything I've said?

 

[ericplotz1]

ericplotz1

1). I never once said what I am doing is a direct manipulation of trust flow. I am simply monitoring how the trust flow correlates with how Googles algo reacts to what I am doing. The "manipulation" would technically apply to every metric, would it not? Which would include TF, making your entire comment irrelevant. The test didn't begin until I noticed my TF shoot up to 29 with 15 home page links and then dropped instantaneously along with my ranking when 200 profile links were added. Then I decided to watch how those links affected ranking and if it correlated with the TF, while blasting them with 400k Xrumer. I then asked other peoples point of view and experience on the matter of how they've witnessed TF correlate with ranking. I haven't seen an authority site yet with a low TF. So my point wasn't to ONLY manipulate TF, but to monitor it. How does it make any sense that manipulating the TF wouldn't manipulate other metrics (referring back to you ceteris paribus comment)? Thats where you sound unintelligible.

2). No kidding!!! What does that have to do with anything?! I am simply testing the accuracy of the metric. Innovation and stepping out of the box is how you develop new tactics and progress SEO methodology.

3). Which is exactly what I am testing and developing a case study from. So I am confused how you just reverted back to what I was doing in the first place. I can't go back and delete those links as that would be worse for my current situation. BUT that Xrumer blast and social signals has improved the TF of some of the links I've checked. So in all actuality, I manipulated the trust there. Just waiting to see if it spills off on to my site. The rankings are showing that the blasts worked and TF hasn't moved. Could be too early to tell if the blast is what did it, and we'll see what happens with ranking.

 

[Christopher II]

1) My understanding was that you were conducting an experiment to see how Trust Flow affects your rankings. Trust Flow has not been isolated as the only variable and therefore the experiment is flawed. The change in ranking is not derived from Trust Flow alone.

2) That sounds good. Determine the degree in which the Trust Flow metric is accurate: sounds like fun.

3) Sounds good. I look forward to hearing of how your experiment progresses. Nice work.

 

[ericplotz1]

1) My understanding was that you were conducting an experiment to see how Trust Flow affects your rankings. Trust Flow has not been isolated as the only variable and therefore the experiment is flawed. The change in ranking is not derived from Trust Flow alone.

Not sure what you mean by this. How would you isolate a metric when all metrics are congruent? Again it was a test to see how accurate the single metric was, which you seemed to have understood so Im not sure why you are still responding as though TF is some method of accomplishing ranking and being thrown out of context.

3) Sounds good. I look forward to hearing of how your experiment progresses. Nice work.

Thank you and I will definitely keep you updated.

 

[ericplotz1]

I wanted to update everyone. So my traffic and ranking has improved for about 30 of my keywords. A few are on the first page and many on the 2nd page.

Although, my TF has completely tanked. I'm interested to see how Google reacts in the next couple of months. Here's some screenshot updates:







Also, I have just purchased 10 home page posts on high TF domains. Let's see if some of that TF spills off onto the page.