SEO challenge: Learning through competition

Learning through competition

Under the supervision of Laurent Laine, teacher and Director of the SEO company Maclaine, Year 3 students of the Bachelor in Communications and Digital Strategies took part in an SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) competition in which only one team would emerge victorious! The challenge? Putting into practice the SEO techniques they had learned during their studies by developing a website that would be well positioned on the different search engine results pages. 

The main focus of the competition… SEO

Before going any further, a quick reminder is in order… what exactly is SEO all about?

Appearing among the first few results generated by a search engine is not something that happens merely by chance! SEO, which is also known as ‘natural referencing’, refers to a set of techniques that help your website to be positioned at the very top of the search engine results pages.

There are a number of different strategies and methods for optimising websites and their ranking. Paid referencing (Search Engine Advertising) and natural referencing (Search Engine Optimisation) are two very different but complementary techniques. 

For companies, SEO is about achieving maximum visibility and traffic to their website. The higher up the site appears in the search results, the more it will be visited.

Developing the pages of a website, using keywords and appropriate content, is essential for good search engine optimisation.

The competition

For several years now, Excelia has been organising a competition amongst its classes, on different themes, in order to push its students to excel… and this year was certainly no exception! 

The challenge was to obtain the best position in Google for the keyword ‘Ailecxe’ (Excelia spelt backwards), a word which had never before appeared in this search engine! Over a period of several weeks, the students rolled up their sleeves to create a site, write content, index and implement the necessary SEO strategies.

First, working in small groups, the students had to find a domain name and create a website using WordPress. Then, they used the skills they had learned during their studies to apply the necessary SEO techniques so that their site would benefit from excellent natural referencing in Google.

However, in addition to keywords, SEO includes many more factors that need to be considered. The students therefore had to use social media to boost traffic to their site, write and create content, as well as interlinking, which consists of creating links between the pages of a website.

The performance of each project was monitored daily via the website ranks.fr. The four teams developed their sites around various themes such as cosmetics, health, and even lifestyle.

The proud winners of this gruelling but rewarding experience were the students who created the website ‘Health Solution’: the structure of the site was solid, the content was well-developed, and good use of social media made all the difference.

The losers had no reason to be ashamed of their performance and everyone left with a sound knowledge of SEO!

Find out more about the Bachelor in Communications and Digital Strategies