Page 24 - SEO Mad Scientist 2020 Report

Jump Link Tests

Do Jump Links Help with Local Rankings of Long-Tail Keywords?
(Test #1: Long Tail Jump Links)

Test Setup: March 13, 2020

Our hypothesis is that implementing jump links
in local search will help with long tail keyword
rankings. So we started tracking long tail
keywords to the right (ex. "sedation dentistry
clinic in CITY'' and "sedation dentistry price in
CITY"). We weren’t really ranking for any of
these long tail keywords before testing, so we
should have some pretty obvious results...

Once we established our benchmarks we
implemented headings on the page that
targeted the long tail terms, created a jump link with the long tail modifier (such as #dentist) and
put in links at the top of the page for the different jump links.

Test Result:

We monitored long tail keyword performance over the following weeks, but no meaningful
change happened in either direction. The results were inconclusive at best.

Are Table of Contents Jump Links More Effective?

Test Setup:

We noticed "Table of Contents" (TOC) that link to different sections of the page’s content were
being displayed in SERPs. This led us to test the impact of jump links in a table of contents for
rankings and indexing. Would it improve rankings by adding these?

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