E1213: Kyle Roof ranked a page written mostly in Lorem Ipsum gibberish #1 on Google for a rhinoplasty keyword. After the experiment made headlines, Google deindexed it. That same night, Google also deindexed 20 of his other SEO test sites, despite their separate hosting and lack of links between them.
Kyle, SEO legend and founder of PageOptimizer Pro, tells me exactly how he pulled it off, why he believes Google changed its spam rules afterward, and why he says his gibberish pages still rank today. We also get into what he's learned from more than 400 SEO experiments and which popular SEO recommendations his tests contradict.
In this two-hour epic pod, we cover:
- How Kyle used Lorem Ipsum mixed with target keywords, variations, and contextual terms to rank #1 in Google organic search and Maps.
- What happened when Google deindexed his original site and 20 seemingly unrelated test sites, and what Kyle suspects Google did to identify them.
- Why Kyle says his 2019 Lorem Ipsum pages are still on page one, and how he continues testing Google's algorithm with gibberish content.
- The four on-page keyword placements Kyle prioritizes: title tags, H1s, paragraph text, and URLs, plus his findings on H2s, H3s, and anchor text.
- Why misspellings, grammar, reading level, and even a 25-second page load failed to hurt rankings in his tests.
- What his tests show about click-through rate, and why bounce rate, dwell time, and pogo-sticking are harder to pin down.
- Why he thinks agencies waste money obsessing over Core Web Vitals, and why he checks time to first byte and total blocking time.
- Why he recommends buying expired domains, what he checks before buying, and how they speed up SEO testing and new businesses.
- What his GoDaddy domain tests found about exact-match domains, descriptive extensions like .florist, indexing speed, and shorter URLs.
- How hidden text and page-builder templates affect Google's word counts, and what to check before migrating a website.
- Why the Yandex algorithm leak reinforced his views about TF-IDF, BM25, and Google's ranking systems.
- Why AI-written articles often miss important contextual terms, and how to give AI word-count and keyword benchmarks that match the SERP.
- How Kyle builds content silos, links supporting pages to competitive target pages, and uses People Also Ask questions for both Google and AI search.
- Why he believes SEO and GEO rely on the same foundations, and why he questions whether ChatGPT visibility is worth chasing for every business.
- Why pages that stray too far from a website's main topic can hurt SEO, using HubSpot's organic traffic collapse as an example.
- His $1,000, 90-day SEO plan: restore pages on an expired domain, target attainable keywords, and decide whether to spend the remaining budget on Google Ads.
- How Kyle and Joy Hawkins found that nofollow backlinks can influence rankings, and his favorite way to earn links by organizing community events.
- His prediction that today's large language models will be replaced by a different technology within three years.
⭐️ PageOptimizer Pro - https://pageoptimizer.pro
⭐️ Kyle Roof on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-roof-seo/
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/
00:00 Meet Kyle Roof
00:58 SEO Barely Changes
02:59 Four Pillars of Search
05:05 Algorithms Are Math
08:29 Testing Myths Busted
12:04 Do User Signals Matter
17:10 AI Content and Context
20:11 Lorem Ipsum Rhinoplasty
27:45 Expired Domains Shortcut
35:17 On Page Signals That Win
38:16 PageOptimizer Pro and AI
41:34 What SEOs Underestimate
43:01 SERP Intent Edge Cases
45:15 Authority vs Pogo Sticking
48:42 User Signals and Metrics
49:44 Core Web Vitals Myth
51:11 Descriptive TLD Experiments
56:37 Short URLs and Subfolders
59:38 SEO Tricks vs Humans
01:00:37 Niches and YMYL Attacks
01:03:54 API Leaks and BM25
01:06:17 CMS Hidden Word Counts
01:11:31 Schema Hype Reality
01:14:31 AI Content Benchmarks
01:17:32 Content Silos for AI
01:22:03 LLMs vs Google Surfaces
01:23:38 AI Indexes and SERP Poisoning
01:26:51 Rank Tracker SERP Glitches
01:28:38 Using GSC for History
01:30:10 Query Fanout Opportunities
01:32:08 GEO vs SEO Debate
01:36:28 PAA Content Mining
01:37:45 AI Search Vanity Metrics
01:41:45 Grind Over Worrying
01:42:56 Topical Focus and HubSpot
01:48:05 90 Day SEO Gameplan
01:55:03 Link Building for Good
01:58:34 LLMs Will Be Replaced
02:02:45 Where to Find Kyle
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/
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