Page 23 - SEO Mad Scientist 2020 Report

We must consider that a few of our example sites were switched from an EMD style to a brand, as
well as the different populations and competitiveness. This could cause huge variations in the
data. We chose the examples above as they display the most common findings, which occurred
about 70% of the time. Because of this, we believe that the source of the content may be
considered by search engines, as it is the biggest variable we found.

The content topics could also be a major factor, as one set of content is very general and
provides a wide range of value and the other sites have very keyword-targeted, promotional type
content. This more targeted content could be causing cannibalization issues (or something else).

The main keywords "title loan city" and "car title loan in the city" seemed to struggle the most.
The key observation was that these sites were no longer ranking the same pages (the homepage
or car title loan page) for these terms and instead showed another URL. Almost as if Google
didn't like that content for the target term all of a sudden…

With all that said, it's important to understand that this is more data analysis than a test. There are
many possible impacting factors, including:

1. Exact match domain vs branded domain
2. Content source
3. Content topics
4. Content cannibalization
5. Keyword competition level

Factors 1 and 2 were being tested as of this update, but we needed better test ideas for the
remaining points. If you have any ideas, be sure to submit them to us!

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