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Launch HN: RankScience (YC W17) – Automated Split-Testing for SEO

rankscience.com

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Re: Launch HN: RankScience (YC W17) – Automated Split-Testing for SEO

#11

Post by ryanb »

BickNowstrom wrote: post #10
ryanb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is link is related to Conversation Rate Optimization testing (like Optimizely). We don't do A/B testing on single pages, or do cloaking or anything of the sort, but we run experiments across groups of URLs, and then we sum up the results and run our analysis. Also, our goal is not to deceive Google in anyway - a lot of our tests are related to increasing CTR (which is testing humans) and on-page times. (again te…

My post was in response to the homepage copy: > RankScience sits next to your website, making thousands of experiments to tweak your HTML in order to improve your page rankings. This seems to me an attempt at reverse engineering the ranking algorithm. Is my interpretation correct? And if so, is this allowed / in scope of the guidelines?

We're not reverse engineering Google's ranking algorithm, so no. : ) Good luck to anyone trying to do that! (I'd recommend against it) Yes, you're allowed to make changes to your pages.

Re: Launch HN: RankScience (YC W17) – Automated Split-Testing for SEO

#13

Post by saycheese »

dillonforrest wrote: post #3

Co-founder/CTO here. Please share any SEO questions!

Why have you taken this approach to monetizing this SEO optimization method, instead of other options, for example PPC arbitrage?

Why A/B testing and not a more complex statistical hypothesis testing method?

Re: Launch HN: RankScience (YC W17) – Automated Split-Testing for SEO

#16

Post by ryanb »

saycheese wrote: post #13
dillonforrest wrote: post #3

Co-founder/CTO here. Please share any SEO questions!

Why have you taken this approach to monetizing this SEO optimization method, instead of other options, for example PPC arbitrage? Why A/B testing and not a more complex statistical hypothesis testing method?

The biggest reason is that there's so much more volume in organic search (80% of all clicks) vs paid search (20%), and the ROI on SEO is so high. There's also so many companies in the PPC space -- it's quite saturated. SEO is appealing to us because we think it's overlooked due to stigma.

SEO and PPC are really two very different games overall, but I have a ton of respect for people who are really good at PPC.

Re: Launch HN: RankScience (YC W17) – Automated Split-Testing for SEO

#17

Post by Fede_V »

ryanb wrote: post #11
BickNowstrom wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My post was in response to the homepage copy: > RankScience sits next to your website, making thousands of experiments to tweak your HTML in order to improve your page rankings. This seems to me an attempt at reverse engineering the ranking algorithm. Is my interpretation correct? And if so, is this allowed / in scope of the guidelines?

We're not reverse engineering Google's ranking algorithm, so no. : ) Good luck to anyone trying to do that! (I'd recommend against it) Yes, you're allowed to make changes to your pages.

Correct me if I am wrong, but you are trying to determine the effect that many different tweaks have on Google's ranking. You are not explicitly trying to reverse engineer their search algorithm, but, implicitly, you are trying to build a model of their model, and to then use your implicit model to drive up rankings.

Of course, the final determination is entirely up to Google, but this seems kind of a risky game to play.

Re: Launch HN: RankScience (YC W17) – Automated Split-Testing for SEO

#18

Post by dillonforrest »

saycheese wrote: post #13
dillonforrest wrote: post #3

Co-founder/CTO here. Please share any SEO questions!

Why have you taken this approach to monetizing this SEO optimization method, instead of other options, for example PPC arbitrage? Why A/B testing and not a more complex statistical hypothesis testing method?

> Why A/B testing and not a more complex statistical hypothesis testing method?

We like simple! We only take on extra complexity if it's worthwhile.

Re: Launch HN: RankScience (YC W17) – Automated Split-Testing for SEO

#19

Post by ryanb »

mhoad wrote: post #12
dillonforrest wrote: post #3

Co-founder/CTO here. Please share any SEO questions!

How does your product compare to Distilled's offering? https://www.distilledodn.com/

Ours is automated and continuous, and there's is a self-service product. We like those guys though!
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