Stop believing that a site performs well in SEO (or not) on the basis of a simple random search.

This publication includes examples from a conference held in 2018.

In relation to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) we have already discussed how a search engine works (crawling, indexing, ranking) as well as how the PageRank algorithm works and its importance in the search for links.

Here we will look at the influence of search history.

Let's imagine a brand new internet user who has never used a search engine before. He wants to search for the word 'lotus'.

Since the search engine does not know exactly what the user is looking for, it will offer several options.

The result page (SERP for Search Engine Result Page) will be composed as follows (on 13 February 2024, in French)

the French-language Lotus Cars page https://www.lotuscars.com/fr-FR

the French-language Lotus Cars Wikipedia page https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Cars

the Lotus Cars home page https://www.lotuscars.com/

then the Knowledge Panel: a collection of aggregated content. Here you'll find the Lotus Cars Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin (UK) and Tiktok social networking accounts.

The Lotus hygiene site lotushygiene.com

The Lotus (the plant) Wikipedia page

the Lotus watches page lotus-watches.com and so on.

Google is more of an answer engine than a search engine.

This variety of answers makes it possible to respond to the variety of topics that may be of interest to web users.

It is then their choices, through their clicks among the results offered, that will later shape the results page.

Let's say, for example, that our brand new visitor first decides to search for the word 'jaguar'.

Apart from a few things, the SERP would look like this:

Now let's say he prefers the car to the animal. And then he searches for 'lotus'.

In this case, the results page will no longer look like the one above, but rather like this.

Search engines use previous searches to suggest what users are looking for. This is the "Filter Bubble" theorised by Eli Pariser, and is in line with the work of the French scientist David Chavalarias, popularised in his book "Toxic Data".

It's worth noting in passing that the search engine will prefer to offer things that can be bought (via Google Ads, Google Shopping, Bing Ads etc.), and will make most of its profits from advertising.

Tell me what you're looking for and I'll tell you what to buy (or what to believe).

In order to determine a site's true positioning in terms of search intent, it is necessary to either delete the browsing history for each search, or to use tools that model the search page and eliminate the surfer's browsing history.

In addition, the aim of SEO is to generate traffic to the site in question. This is known as organic traffic (Organic Search), as opposed to paid traffic (Paid Search), or traffic generated by sending emails (Email Traffic), publishing on social networks (Social), sponsored posts (Paid Social) or pages from other websites (Referral Traffic).

Clearly, the idea is not to position yourself on a single keyword, but on several, targeting those that are highly sought after and where you have a chance of being positioned given the level of competition.

It's a constant competition (confrontation - clash) to win visibility on the Internet and here is one way to represent the SEO performance of a website on a very small - but optimised - site of 75 pages.

Data visualisation of the organic performance of an optimised site - Laurent HELAINE

The green circles represent the different pages. The one in the south-west is the home page, to which all the others are linked. This page is mainly used for ‘branded’ searches, i.e. searches based on the name of the site.

The size of the circles is proportional to the organic traffic they receive. In pink, these are the search intentions on which each of the pages is positioned. Similarly, the size of the circles is proportional to the organic traffic they drive to the page in question.

As we can see, in SEO it is vital to take a holistic approach to a website's impact, otherwise you run the risk of falling into cherry-picking and drawing the wrong conclusions, leading to the wrong decisions.