dgrati - 6:02 pm on Jul 17, 2006 (gmt 0)

This is a somewhat philosophical post.

Is SEO or the ranking of a page so complex that it's essentially "irreducible"?

From wiki, "Irreducibility" is defined as:

Irreducibility, in philosophy, has the sense that a complete account of an entity will not be possible at lower levels of explanation.

E.g. Water can be broken down to hydrogen and oxygen. But neither hydrogen nor oxygen show the characteristics of water.

With respect to SEO, suppose you have a bunch of variables such as inbound links, keyword density, LSI, etc, that control a page's rank in SERPs.

And suppose you start with a page at position 10 for keyword "widget". Now you change kwd density a bit, keeping everything else the same; the pos changes. You add LSI terms, pos. changes again.

However, to get the maximum or even desired effect, you have to optimize ALL variables at the same time. Meaning, you can't "control" some variables. If this were the case, SEO would be "irreducible".

So. Do you think SEO is "irreducible" and in what instances have you noticed "reducibility"?