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Web Ranking of Higher Education Institutions:
An SEO Analysis
Alrence Santiago Halibas
Faculty of Computing Sciences
Muscat, Oman
alrence@gulfcollege.edu.om
Leslyn Bonachita Reazol
College of Engineering and
Architecture
Ozamiz City, Philippines
leslyn.reazol@lsu.edu.ph
Indu Govinda Pillai
Faculty of Computing Sciences
Muscat, Oman
indu@gulfcollege.edu.om
Erbeth Gerald Delvo
College of Engineering and
Architecture
Ozamiz City, Philippines
erbethgerald.delvo@lsu.edu.ph
Anju Matthew Cherian
Faculty of Computing Sciences
Muscat, Oman
anjuit@gulfcollege.edu.om
Genevive Halasan Sumondong
Ozamiz City School of Arts and Trades
Department of Education
Ozamiz City, Philippines
genevive.sumondong@deped.gov.ph
Abstract — There are numerous ranking systems that
provide web rankings for colleges and universities around the
world. The aim of this paper is to present the findings of SEO
audit and analysis of 34 HEI websites in Oman in terms of web
presence and impact. The study used the SEO audit metrics
provided by Moz - domain authority score, linking root
domain, ranking keywords, and spam score. The findings
revealed that only one (1) HEI has achieved a Good quality for
domain authority while all the others have low domain
authority. The same HEI has scored high on the linking root
domains and ranking keywords. However, most of the HEIs
have attained a zero (24%) or low (76%) spam score. The
study recommends that HEIs should exert more efforts in
improving their SEO to increase visibility and impact on the
web.
Keywords—Domain Authority, SEO, university ranking, web
ranking, webometrics
I. INTRODUCTION
Web technologies cover a broad spectrum of applications
and tools that are used for a variety of purpose. In business,
web technologies can serve as tools to increase productivity,
improve user experience, collect competitor information,
monitor the news and social media accounts, and so much
more. Significantly, they can boost the market share and
revenue of business organizations. In the academic sector, on
the other hand, web technologies can serve as marketing
tools to promote the online visibility of Higher Education
Institutions (HEIs) for student recruitment, brand awareness,
and marketing purposes.
We have seen unprecedented technological
advancements in scholarly publishing through the
computerization and web publication of documents related to
research[1]. Web publication of scholarly materials can
inform the public about the academic level and achievements
of HEIs [2]. Most HEIs rely on ranking systems to indicate
their level of achievement against competing HEIs [3]. There
have been many studies that discussed how online presence
can indicate quality in higher education [4][5][6][7]. The
study of [8] revealed that there is a statistical correlation
between web ranking and university ranking. For instance,
Scimago ranking system considers online presence, which is
measured by Google metrics, as a determinant in its ranking
[9]. It constitutes 20% of its total ranking. Shanghai ranking,
for example, uses a composite indicator that combines
weight factors with a set of indicators [9]. Equally, the
Webometrics Ranking of World Universities, which is
operated by Cybermetrics Lab in Spain, ranked 28,000
universities in the world in terms of web presence and impact
[10]. They claimed that web presence is reliable indicator
that indirectly measures an HEI’s reputation and global
performance against its stated mission. Their approach is to
evaluate the web content of an HEI and measure the
relevance and impact of its web content and not the usability
or popularity of its website [11]. They promote open access
to web publication of research findings for dissemination of
academic knowledge [12].
The survey results conducted by NRCCUA revealed that
online searches of students ranked as the top method for
discovering HEIs, however, HEIs are facing Search Engine
Optimization (SEO) challenges [13]. Hence, their first
suggestion was to perform an SEO audit to identify
weaknesses which will be used for an SEO strategic plan.
Therefore, the main goal of this study is to determine the
SEO audit results of the website of each HEI, compare the
results with other HEIs in the region, and suggests SEO
strategies.
The paper is outlined as follows: Section II provides the
literature review and followed by Section III that presents the
research methodology. Next, Section IV discusses the
findings of the research. Finally, Section V concludes the
study.
II. BACKGROUND AND RELATED LITERATURE
The section will provide a background and review of the
literature and studies relevant to the study.
An organization’s online presence starts when web users
are able to find them in search engines. According to [14],
internet search accounts for 10% to 90% web traffic. In a
survey conducted by Hubspot, the results revealed that the
top 2 marketing priorities of companies are converting leads
to customers and increasing website traffic [15]. However,
most web users only browse the first two pages of search
results [16]. Hence, it is important to achieve high ranking in
search results. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a
marketing-related process of improving the web ranking of
websites in organic search results. SEO tools are used to
predict the ranking strength of a website and compare how it
performs against its competitors. Highly effective and
popular SEO tools include SE Ranking, Serpstat, SEMRush,
Netpeak Spider, SEO PowerSuite, Aherfs, Google Search
Console and Keyword Planner, and Raven[17]. Interestingly,
Google dominates 90% of the search market. Currently,
search optimization is increasing at a fast pace and
companies and institutions are highly investing in this to
measure and monitor their web activity.
A. Search Engines
An online search engine is a program that finds relevant
information on the web. Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, AOL,
and Ask.com are some examples of popular search engines
[18]. The goal of a search engine is to “deliver the right
content to the right person in the right place and at the right
time” [1, p.1]. Search engines use different algorithms, thus,
they produce different results for the same search item.
Consequently, the algorithms used by these search engines
are corporate secrets, hence, how data is collected, sorted,
and ranked by search engines are not disclosed to the public.
A search engine consists of a web crawler, indexer, and a
user interface for the search query [19]. A web crawler is a
commercial or free software application that collects data
from specific web location. This program will crawl the
entire website and discover its link structure for analysis and
monitoring. A customized web crawler requires significant
human participation and computing resources [20].
B. Moz’s SEO Audit Tool
Domain Authority (DA) is a ranking score that is
developed by Moz to measure the ranking strength of a
website. It is a metric that predicts the ranking ability of
website’s domain and subdomains on Search Engine Results
Page (SERP), however, it is not used by Google to determine
search rankings [21]. Google uses its own set of ranking
algorithms. Nonetheless, domain authority is the closest
representation of web ranking in search engine results,
especially Google. Moz uses 40 indicators to compute the
domain authority score, to name a few, Linking Root
Domains, MozRank, MozTrust, Quality Content, social
signals, and search engine friendliness [22]. There are similar
systems that provide domain authority or ranking such as
Domain Rating of Ahref, and Trust Flow and Citation Flow
of Majestic [23]. These systems calculate the domain
authority score using different indicators. As for Moz, it
provides a score from a logarithmic scale of 1 to 100. A low
score is less than 40, the average score is between 40 and 49,
good score is above 50 to 59, and excellent score is above
60. The score is determined by several factors including the
number of unique backlinks, strength of external links,
quality of external links, quality of website content, social
signals, and search engine friendliness. A high score
indicates that the website is more likely to rank higher in
SERPs.
Linking Root domains, which is an important metric
considered when generating SERPS, is the number of unique
external links of a website. When a website has two links
from the same website, it is counted as one linking root
domain. Generally, when a page is more connected, it will be
rank higher in the SERPs. However, a website with few
inbound links or backlinks from authoritative sources may
have higher domain authority as compared to a website with
a high number of backlinks from mediocre sources. Google
considers backlinks as the foremost ranking factor, hence,
having a strong link profile is essential in search rankings
and traffic [24]. Moreover, the studies of [25], [26], and [5]
performed link counts to measure the web impact factor
among universities.
Keywords, which have high search volume but low
competition, should be used to drive website traffic. Moz
provides a metric that measures the number of keywords of a
website used in search engine rankings and compares these
to the top 50 keyword ranks in Google. This metric can
check the ranking keywords and evaluate how much traffic
these keywords produce. Knowing the right keywords is
essential for creating quality content and gaining authority on
the web.
Moz also provides a spam score metric that shows the
percentage of websites with similar features that were
banned or penalized by Google. It is based on a machine-
learning algorithm that uses 27 known features common to
the banned websites. A low spam score is 1-30%, medium
spam score is 31-60%, and high spam score is 61-100%.
Furthermore, a spam score can be used to investigate the
strength of a website’s inbound links.
C. Webometrics Ranking of World Universities
Webometrics is used to analyse content, technology, web
usage, and web link structure [9]. There are several tools and
metrics that collect data from a website and analyze its
contents and applications, web technologies, and weblink
structure [27]. The use of these tools can be beneficial to
extract meaningful insights from the collected data.
Webometrics Ranking of World Universities, for instance,
measure the web visibility using the number of webpages
and files linked to an HEI’s primary web domain and sub-
domains. It also evaluates the impact of these webpages
according to the number and integrity of its backlinks.
III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This section will discuss the methods employed in
collecting, analysing, and interpreting the results.
Foremost, the data were obtained from these two (2)
independent sources. First, the web ranking of 34 HEIs in
Oman was collected from Webometrics [28]. Only two out
of the four indicators were collected, namely presence rank
and impact rank. The other two indicators were discarded as
these are bibliometric data that are specific to research and
scholarly publishing. The chosen indicators will be used to
compare with the SEO audit results.
Second, the study collected and analysed selected SEO
data from moz.com that is a subscription-based online
marketing application. This website provides a free tool that
will perform web analytics to provide insights for individuals
and organizations. It provides keyword search and
suggestions, site audits and check-ups, competitor tracking,
webpage optimization insights and more for Search Engine
Optimization (SEO). The values for the given for Domain
Authority, Linking Root Domains, Ranking keywords, and
Spam score were considered in this study.
The audit tool used is Moz’s SEO audit tool that provides
content and structural analysis of websites. The SEO audit
results of each HEI are then tabulated, summarized, and
compared. Descriptive analysis was employed in analysing
the results.
The webometrics list of web ranking of HEIs was
released in July 2019. On the other hand, this study
conducted the audit in November 2019. There might be SEO
improvements in any of the HEIs in between these periods,
hence, variation in the web rankings is highly possible.
Nevertheless, this study used the current SEO data of the
HEIs and used these to perform the analysis. In reporting the
results, the names of the HEIs were anonymized because no
permission was sought from them as regards inclusion in this
study.
IV. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
This section will discuss the insights and interpretations
that are derived from the results generated. Fig. 1
demonstrates the percent distribution of HEIs by Domain
Authority. Only 3% of the HEIs have a DA quality of Good,
whereas, the majority (97%) of the HEIs have a DA quality
of Low. Consequently, none of the HEIs has achieved a DA
quality of Excellent or at least Average. According to [24],
DA scores are correlated with higher rankings. Therefore, it
can be concluded that HEIs in Oman need to improve the
quality of DA if it were to increase its ranking.
Fig. 1 Distribution of Domain Authority Scores
Fig. 2 illustrates the distribution of HEIs by Spam Score.
The graph reveals that approximately a quarter (24%) of the
HEIs have zero degrees of spam. Most of the HEIs (76%)
have achieved a low degree of spam score. None of the HEIs
have gained a medium to high degree of spam.
Fig. 2 Distribution of Spam Scores
Table 1 presents the top 10 web ranking of HEIs
according to Webometrics Presence Rank. The HEIs that
made it to the list are those with domain scores of not less
than 25, linking root domains of not less than 105, and
ranking keywords of not less than 7. Additionally, three (3)
HEIs have a spam score of zero. Examining the top 3 HEIs,
it is expected that HEI A would be ranked higher than HEI B
and HEI AC ranked higher than HEI B. This is also the case
of the other HEIs in the list. This may be due to the fact that
the web ranking of HEIs was published in July 2019 while
the SEO audit was conducted in November 2019. Significant
improvements in the websites for these HEIs may have been
carried out in between these dates.
Table 1
Top 10 web ranking of HEIs according to Webometrics
Presence Rank
WebO
Presence
Rank
HEI
Code
Domain
Authority
Score
Linking
Root
Domains
Ranking
Keywords
Spam
Score
1
B
32
271
10
0%
2
A
55
4700
1000
0%
3
AC
32
477
40
3%
4
X
27
211
26
10%
5
P
37
1400
82
3%
6
F
28
194
12
1%
7
AA
30
1000
33
0%
8
AD
29
1200
124
6%
9
I
25
105
7
3%
10
G
35
565
46
1%
The top 10 web ranking of HEIs according to
Webometrics Impact Rank is shown in Table 2. As reported
in Fig. 1, only 3% of the HEIs have a DA of Good which
constitutes only one (1) HEI, in this case, HEI A. As noticed,
this HEI has the most number of linking root domains and
ranking keywords with zero spam score. It can be inferred
that this HEI may have put on work on as regards their SEO.
The other HEIs that follow have to keep up because their
scores in all metrics are significantly lower as compared to
HEI A. Nonetheless, four (4) of the HEIs have consistently
made it to the top 10 rank list according to presence rank and
impact rank. These are HEIs A, P, G, and AD.
Table 2
Top 10 web ranking of HEIs according to Webometrics
Impact Rank
WebO
Impact
Rank
HEI
Code
Domain
Authority
Score
Linking
Root
Domains
Ranking
Keywords
Spam
Score
1
A
55
4700
1000
0%
2
P
37
1400
82
3%
3
G
35
565
46
1%
4
U
30
409
33
0%
5
N
30
417
17
1%
6
AD
29
1200
124
6%
7
AF
31
412
29
1%
8
L
29
370
21
5%
9
S
14
31
57
4%
10
R
39
346
41
3%
In summary, HEIs in Oman should exert more effort in
their SEO to have better rankings in terms of web presence
and impact. They can review their domain name, optimize
all on-page content, regularly publish high-quality content,
and improve internal linking structure. Web traffic can be
improved by updating or creating more content. Nowadays,
highly ranked HEIs are those that published quality materials
on the web [9]. These web materials can sourced from the
contribution of the academic stakeholders who can provide
resources that can increase a website’s visibility.
Furthermore, internal links must be reviewed to improve user
experience. Web users should be directed and guided to
avoid disengagement. Likewise, link audit is necessary to
improve the link profile of HEI websites. Links to low
quality and spam sources must be removed from the website
to improve the domain authority. Finally, SEO tools can help
structure the website so that it can be easily indexed by
search engines and easier for users to find the right content.
V. CONCLUSION
This study performed an SEO audit that measures the
overall performance of the HEI websites in Oman. It
compared the key SEO performance metrics that can inform
the web ranking of an HEI. The findings can be used by
HEIs to gather general insights and leverage the insights
learnt from this study to increase their web ranking. This
study will help raise awareness among HEIs to regularly
review and reflect on their SEO efforts.
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