Page 52 - SEO Mad Scientist 2020 Report

Update: September 25, 2020

We lost all the rankings reported two weeks ago. We believe this was most likely due to the fact
that the brand name is the exact keyword and we have no branding or optimization done. At the
beginning of the week, prior to the ranking drop off, we were starting to build citations, social
media, google stacks, and more to test the ranking ability.

We had nearly 50 tests running on GMB sites, allowing us to really zero in on the factors that
could have caused the ranking drop off. When we researched well-ranking GMB sites, we noticed
that the best-ranking sites organically have the best branding and optimization locally. Our test
GMB sites lacked this.

We also wanted to see the difference between the types of "brands", so we had a large variation
of brand type tests. We also split testing these between listing and not listing the address on the
website.

● Brand Name With Exact Keyword
● Brand Name With Brand Term and Partial Keyword
● Brand Name With Only Branded Terms
● Brand Name with Brand Terms and Exact Match Terms
● Brand Name With Partial Keyword

Once we launched the sites we did adjust the URLs and noticed some did not reindex as quickly
as normal. Once the URL indexed they seemed to be following the same pattern as last time with
rankings starting to appear almost instantly. We benchmarked the results and waited.

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