Page 75 - SEO Mad Scientist 2020 Report

reference term and no "entity link". We confirmed this theory when reviewing the results about a
week later. Google had switched our results from the very first test in #5 to the following:

Position #1 – Page 3

Position #2 – Page 1

Position #3 – Page 2 (Not Showing for Term)

After crawling the subsequent tests, Google seemed to return to the first test of #5 and revert the
SERPs to show page #3 which had our "entity link". The findings would suggest that when
Google believes something is an "entity", a reference link will outperform a brand reference.

Bonus Results:

After running the tests and indexing the pages for about a week, Google started showing an
image search for our target search term. The images we used did not have our test keyword. The
only reference of the test term was one spot in the content, but Google seemed to pick up these
images and list them in image search for the term.

In this example, only one of these images was used for the test pages, which is where Google
seems to pull the relevance for the one reference term on the page. The other photos Google
just decided to pull on its own. We have found various associations with the images but in some
cases it appears Google is just trying to pull other images that are "similar" to the one used. Not
many conclusions, but definitely an interesting consideration for entity association and images.

As always, we will continue to test new theories and best practices, so you can stay on top of
industry changes. We look forward to more testing to uncover the secrets of the SERPs!

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