Is the process of SEO as simple as the search engines would like us to believe?

By

Siobhan Kelly

In answer to the question I posed, the quick answer is no. Let’s take Google’s search engine results ranking algorithm as an example. It is based on over 200 factors and is constantly being updated, meaning it is virtually impossible to gauge the exact ranking factors taken into account by Google and adapt a website accordingly. Although the search engine providers are not transparent regarding the nature of their ranking algorithms, they do give suggestions regarding SEO best practice that upon implementation, will supposedly give your website a fighting chance of ranking highly within the search engine results page (SERP). Due to restricted practitioner knowledge within this field and the private nature of search engine algorithms, the search engine providers hold on to the power to educate search engine optimisers and control their implementation of SEO.

In order to further knowledge in this area, through academic research I have attempted to develop a general process of SEO that could be followed by marketers implementing a search engine marketing campaign. In order to do this a number of white hat SEO techniques were applied to a start up market research website in order to test the effectiveness of individual techniques at improving page rank within the SERP.

The website has a number of different products within its portfolio: snapShuttle a survey tool, snapDemand a market analysis tool to estimate market demand, snapShare a market analysis tool which monitors brand performance , snapView a market research tool to provide an overview of the consumer within the market and snapAcademic a data collection tool for students and scholars. These product portfolio pages have been optimised using different techniques (meta-tag keywords, title tag keywords, adding keywords to copy, and have just begun backward linking) to test the consumer and search engine response.

What's interesting is that although the website has been indexed by Google, it still hasn't surface on Google's search engine results pages as of yet (has been over 1 month now). Google’s webmasters tool provided insights into how Google saw the pages. One observation was that the keywords that were used to create the web pages (from using Google Adwords own Keyword Tool) were not the ones that Google now perceived as main keywords upon indexing the pages. This is important to note as keywords form the building blocks of brand communication in digital marketing. Hence it is important for marketers to sync their keywords with Google.

Another observation that needs our consideration was the difference in the keyword density between the web pages used in this study and the web pages that feature at the top of the SERP. The top ranking webpages had an over 100% increase in keyword density, which in itself suggests more is better. However, the general search engine advice is against keyword stuffing. Perhaps further empirical research is needed in order to establish the optimal keyword density.

Results from my research thus far lead to the simple conclusion that SEO is in no way, shape or form a simple process with set rules and guidelines. It cannot be implemented on a one off occasion, but must be constantly refined and redeveloped as a consequence of regular algorithm updates. Furthermore, it is difficult to test the effectiveness of singular SEO techniques as in order to be effective in improving ranking many techniques must be implemented simultaneously.  All the same marketers cannot afford to ignore SEO as digital marketing gains prominence.