The Title Tag Test: Determining The Value Of A Link
As a link builder, it’s important for me to know the value of the links I’m building. Will they pass link juice or am I just wasting my time?
The title tag test is one of the main things I do to to make sure I’m building effective links.
Here’s how the test works. I pick an internal page that’s at least a week old, because sometimes Google takes awhile to index pages. I make sure the page has a unique title tag.
So, I wouldn’t test this page: Find Top Paying Keywords for Google AdSense. This title is filled with common keywords.
Instead, I’ll look at a pages like: Many Big SEO Firms Make Chicken Scratch or The Spamification of Trusted Words, Ideas, & Organizations.
What you’re looking for are words that you don’t usually see in the same sentence and/or unique words. In the two examples above, you don’t usually see the phrase chicken scratch paired with big SEO firms. And spamification is a unique word.
The next step is taking the unique titles and searching them on Google. If the pages with the unique titles are in the top 20 of Google, then more than likely the website is passing link juice.
The reasoning behind this test is that unique titles should rank in Google because the title tag is one of the most important SEO factors. If a page with a unique title does not have a top 20 ranking for its title tag, then that’s evidence that website is penalized by Google.
This test can help you avoid trusting PageRank (PR) too much. I’ve found many PR5 sites that don’t rank in the top 20 for their unique title tags.