Search Engine Optimisation

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Search engine optimisation research

Researching search engine optimisation can be a very frustrating, time consuming and confusing task. Nether the less, it is a very important and persistent part of SEO. Without good research you will not see the subtle difference, required to achieve top spot; without good research you may not see the effects of algorithm changes and you may fail to realize the methods promoted by spam merchants will undoubtedly hurt your site in the long term.

Research is an ongoing task that will never stop or reside, however the benefits of good research are colossal. Having the ability to make informed decision about the methods which you employ for search engine optimisation or which are employed on your behalf by a third part SEO company will be invaluable.

SEO sites and Forums

Search engine optimisation sites like seochat.com and highrankings.com provide a wealth of information to get you started. However as you read through more and more of these SEO sites you will find contradictions, discrepancies and some times false information. Recently I receive a news letter from a SEO site which provided tips to getting indexed in directories: one of the tips was to submit your web site to DMOZ on a monthly basis until accepted; you will see that this is not good advice as many DMOZ editors work on a first come first served basis and re-submission will renew your request, thus removing you original request and putting your new one at the back of the queue. We suggest that the best frequency for submission is between four and six months, dependent on the category which you are submitting to.

Also you have to ask yourself why SEO sites spend time and effort publishing information that could potentiality damage their own business. The answer to this question is all part of the good SEO principles which you should be employing.

1) On the whole search engine value content which is relevant, authoritative, comprehensive and sufficient.
2) Web masters and web site owners will link naturally to good content.
3) Without content, optimal keywords frequencies and ratios don't add up.

So our advice for researching search engine optimisation from SEO sites is to look a little deeper, learn the less obvious methods of optimisation by what the search engine optimisation sites do as much as what they say.

Forums are another great source of research information, especially if your looking for the most current updates on search engine algorithms and activities. I must add this word of warning however, forums are sometimes contributed to by self professed expert trumpet blowers. Again the Seochat forum is a good place to get started.

SERPs analysis

Identifying trends in SERPs is no way an easy task. The many factors which contribute to a sites position are varied and have undisclosed weights. Using tools like SEO chat page rank lookup will help to distinguish between on page and off page factors. Identify and use a reasonably popular search term, then look at the top performing sites and bottom performing sites for each PageRank group. i.e. look at the first three PR2 sites which are returned in the results and then look at PR4s that fall behind the PR2 sites (try to find home pages). Now use a tool like go rank to check the distribution and frequency of the keywords used on these pages. If you can see trends after the analysis of many sites, then it is always a good idea to employ your research findings in your site.

Search engine guides

Always check the search engine guides; Google guide, Yahoo guide, MSN guide. The advice in these guides is valuable and sensible, however the focus of the search engine is to provide the best content to the users of their search engine and the focus of search engine optimisation is to convince the search engines that you have the best content for their users. Although these sound the same, they are different and simply employing the advice of the search engine guides will not get you into top positions, however it will help you avoid penalties.

Patents and white papers

If your interested in Google ranking then the place to start your research is the Anatomy of Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine, by Sergy Brin and Lawrence Page, the founders of Google. Although this paper is now some years old, it is still relevant research, as the current Google engine has evolved from the early engine described in this paper and at no time has google been scraped for a completely new model, therefore understanding the basics of Google workings will help you understand the methods of search engine optimisation.

Google patents also provide some very interesting research reading, although not the easiest format to read the evolution of some Google features are described in great detail and can give in-depth insight into how and why some search engine optimisation methods should be employed. For an more informal format of Google white papers and patents we have summariesed and extracted key tips for SEO.