I started a series of posts (initial post – Week 2 – Week 3) that will cover the performance impact for one of my local focused sites simply by adding Yext. This is by no means a true experiment where we take a new domain and try to rank for a bizarre search term using only one specific method, instead this is more of a general test and is not to be seen as scientific.
Quick Notes
- For those wondering why I chose Yext over just going to each site – the answer is that this site is one of many and from a time perspective I just don’t have the resources to manage everything (that being said I know some local sites allow for bulk uploads).
- To date we’ve gained position on 10 terms including multiple keywords that were not in the top 50 results but we’ve also lost rank on seven terms that were already in the top 50. Again we’re just in the initial weeks.
- These Yext posts are turning out to be really popular. I have 42 live posts on my sites and the three Yext posts accounted for a third of my unique pageviews over the last month
Yext Week 4
This week was slightly positive compared to the ranking drops seen in Week 3. One thing to keep in mind is that some terms that gained had dropped in the previous week so they might be bouncing around rather than seeing sustainable rank growth. According to Moz, we gained rank on 9 keywords while losing rank on 6 keywords. My main keyword gained 3 places after a free fall last week.
In accordance with the goal of the test, I did not make any site adjustments, create new site content or do anything externally to mention or link to the site.
| Yext On | Yext On | Yext On | No Yext | No Yext | No Yext | |
| Keyword | 12-Oct | 5-Oct | 28-Sep | 21-Sep | 14-Sep | 7-Sep |
| Keyword 1 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 |
| Keyword 2 | 39 | 46 | 39 | 46 | 46 | Not in Top 50 |
| Keyword 3 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 |
| Keyword 4 | 37 | 43 | 46 | 47 | 47 | 36 |
| Keyword 5 | Not in Top 50 | 34 | 33 | 34 | 41 | Not in Top 50 |
| Keyword 6 | 28 | 24 | 25 | 25 | 27 | Not in Top 50 |
| Keyword 7 | 37 | 36 | 37 | 37 | 34 | Not in Top 50 |
| Keyword 8 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 5 |
| Keyword 9 | 33 | 35 | 25 | 25 | 25 | Not in Top 50 |
| Keyword 10 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | 38 |
| Keyword 11 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 |
| Keyword 12 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 |
| Keyword 13 | 26 | 31 | 26 | 25 | 25 | 5 |
| Keyword 14 | 26 | 24 | 27 | 26 | 28 | 9 |
| Keyword 15 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 |
| Keyword 16 | 21 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 |
| Keyword 17 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 |
| Keyword 18 | Not in Top 50 | 20 | 18 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 |
| Keyword 19 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | 42 |
| Keyword 20 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 |
| Keyword 21 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | 44 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 |
| Keyword 22 | 44 | 25 | 26 | 24 | 31 | 44 |
| Top Keyword | 39 | 42 | 23 | 37 | 33 | 18 |
| Keyword 24 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 |
| Keyword 25 | 38 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | 36 | 38 | Not in Top 50 |
| Keyword 26 | 45 | 46 | 40 | 42 | 42 | Not in Top 50 |
| Keyword 27 | 16 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 16 | 27 |
| Keyword 28 | 13 | 13 | 12 | 13 | 13 | 14 |
| Keyword 29 | 17 | 15 | 15 | 14 | 16 | 20 |
| Keyword 30 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 | Not in Top 50 |
Photo credit: zabdiel
