| Course | MKT 446 Search Engine Optimization (MKT/446) |
|---|---|
| Week | 1 |
| Paper type | SEO competitive analysis |
| Length | about 1,158 words, 4 double-spaced pages plus title page and references |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | University of Phoenix |
| Program | BS in Business |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for MKT 446 Week 1
Third on the Map, Ninth on the Page: Search Engine Foundations and a Competitive Analysis for a Three-Clinic Veterinary Practice in Idaho
[Student Name]
University of Phoenix
MKT/446: Search Engine Optimization
Week 1 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Treasure Valley Animal Hospitals, its competitors and all figures are composites written for a model paper.
Treasure Valley Animal Hospitals is a composite veterinary practice with clinics in Boise, Meridian and Nampa, Idaho. Founded in 1994 by Dr. Elena Marsh, it now employs 14 veterinarians and about 70 support staff and sees roughly 31,000 patient visits a year. Most new clients once came from referrals and drive-by traffic. Over the past three years, new client numbers have flattened even as the Treasure Valley's population has grown by tens of thousands of residents, many of them new arrivals who choose a veterinarian by searching on a phone. When the practice manager, Luis Ortega, searched for veterinarian Meridian on his own phone, the Meridian clinic appeared third in the map results and ninth in the regular results, below two corporate chains and a newer independent clinic. This paper explains how search engines work and why rankings matter, and it presents a competitive analysis of the practice's search position against four rivals.
How Search Engines Work
Search engines perform three tasks. They crawl the web with automated programs that follow links from page to page. They index what they find, recording the words, topics and links on each page. And they rank indexed pages for each query, choosing which to show first. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the practice of making a site easy to crawl and index and worthy of a high rank for the queries its customers type.
Links as Votes
Brin and Page (1998) described the design of the search engine that became Google. Its key idea, PageRank, treated a link from one page to another as a kind of vote, weighting each vote by the importance of the page that cast it. A page linked from many important pages was judged more important itself. Modern ranking systems use hundreds of signals, including relevance, page quality, speed and location, but links from trusted sites still signal authority, and the principle that a page earns rank through the regard of other sites remains central to SEO.
Why Position Matters
Pan et al. (2007) ran an eye-tracking experiment in which students searched for answers using Google. Participants clicked the top results far more often, and when the researchers secretly reversed the order of results, participants still favored the higher positions, even when the lower ones were more relevant. Users trusted the search engine's ranking. The implication for a local business is that ranking ninth is nearly as invisible as not ranking at all.
Organic and Paid Results
Search results pages show paid ads, local map listings and organic, unpaid results. Berman and Katona (2013) modeled how SEO interacts with paid search and argued that SEO can improve the quality of results users see when it helps relevant sites rise, but that it also changes how much firms bid for ads. For Treasure Valley, organic and map rankings matter more than ads because pet owners searching for a regular veterinarian tend to compare reviews and locations rather than click the first ad.
Choosing Competitors
A search competitor is any site that ranks for the queries the practice wants, which can differ from its business rivals. Four were selected after searching 12 core queries, such as veterinarian Boise, emergency vet Nampa and dog vaccinations Meridian, from each clinic's area. They are a national corporate chain with two local clinics, a regional emergency hospital, a newer independent clinic in Meridian and a pet store chain whose clinic pages rank for vaccination queries.
Criteria for the Analysis
Each site was compared on six criteria: visibility, meaning how many of the 12 queries placed it in the top three map listings or top five organic results; content, meaning the depth of pages for services, conditions and locations; technical health, including mobile speed and crawl errors; authority, estimated from the number of distinct local and industry sites linking to it; reviews, meaning count and average rating on the main map platform; and local signals, such as consistent name, address and phone number across directories.
Findings: Visibility
The corporate chain placed in the top results for 10 of the 12 queries, the emergency hospital for 6, the newer independent clinic for 7, the pet store chain for 4 and Treasure Valley for only 5, mostly in Boise, where its oldest clinic has the most reviews.
Findings: Content
Treasure Valley's site has one services page listing 22 services in a bulleted list and one page per clinic with an address and hours. The newer independent clinic has a separate page for each major service, such as dental care, senior pet care and surgery, with explanations, photos of its staff and answers to common questions. The corporate chain has hundreds of pages on pet health conditions, written for national audiences.
Findings: Technical Health
On a mobile speed test, Treasure Valley's home page took about 6.8 seconds to become usable, compared with about 2.5 seconds for the independent clinic. Its site has broken links to an old online pharmacy and no secure version of two pages. These problems make the site harder to use and to crawl.
Findings: Authority and Reviews
Treasure Valley has more local links than the independent clinic, from a decade of sponsoring animal shelter events and the county fair, which is a hidden strength. It also has the most reviews in Boise, 640 with an average of 4.6 stars, but only 112 in Meridian and 85 in Nampa, where the newer clinic has 390.
Findings: Local Signals
The practice's Nampa clinic is listed under three different phone numbers across directories, left over from an old answering service, and the Meridian clinic's listing still shows its former name.
Summary of the Competitive Position
Treasure Valley's strengths are age, community links and Boise reviews. Its weaknesses are thin content, a slow site, inconsistent listings and few reviews outside Boise. The newer independent clinic, with a fraction of the history, outranks it in Meridian through better pages and a faster site. The practice has earned the community's trust offline but has not yet shown search engines that it deserves to rank.
Priorities for the Course
Three priorities follow. First, fix the technical problems and the inconsistent listings, which are fast and inexpensive. Second, build a keyword strategy to decide which services and towns deserve their own pages. Third, turn the practice's community relationships into links and its satisfied clients in Meridian and Nampa into reviews through a simple request after each visit.
Conclusion
Search engines crawl, index and rank pages, and users rarely look beyond the top few results. Research on the original link-based design and on how people trust rankings explains why position determines visibility. The competitive analysis shows that Treasure Valley Animal Hospitals has strong community roots but trails rivals in content, speed and local consistency. The weeks ahead will turn these findings into keyword, architecture, page and content strategies.
References
Berman, R., & Katona, Z. (2013). The role of search engine optimization in search marketing. Marketing Science, 32(4), 644-651. https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2013.0783
Brin, S., & Page, L. (1998). The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual Web search engine. Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, 30(1-7), 107-117. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0169-7552(98)00110-X
Pan, B., Hembrooke, H., Joachims, T., Lorigo, L., Gay, G., & Granka, L. (2007). In Google we trust: Users' decisions on rank, position, and relevance. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(3), 801-823. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00351.x
What the MKT 446 Week 1 instructions ask
The opening MKT 446 assignment typically asks students to explain the basics of search engine optimization and to perform a competitive analysis for a website they choose. Requirements often include describing how search engines crawl, index and rank pages, identifying competitors for target queries and comparing them on factors such as keywords, content, site structure, speed, backlinks and local presence. Some prompts supply a template or ask for a table of findings. Students should define competitors by the searches they win, not only by the businesses they resemble, use consistent criteria and finish with priorities. Support the explanation of search with scholarly sources in APA style and describe how each finding was gathered so the analysis could be repeated.
How this MKT 446 Week 1 example is built
When the practice manager searched for a veterinarian from his own Meridian clinic's parking lot, the clinic showed up third on the map and ninth in the regular results, and the paper sets out to explain why. It first describes the three tasks of a search engine and the original link-voting idea from the founders' 1998 paper. An eye-tracking experiment shows why a ninth-place result is nearly invisible. Four search rivals are then chosen from 12 core queries, including a corporate chain and a three-year-old independent clinic. Six criteria structure the comparison, and the findings reveal thin service pages, a 6.8-second mobile load, conflicting phone listings and few reviews outside Boise, balanced by a hidden strength in community links.
MKT 446 Week 1 grading rubric: where the points go
Competitive analysis papers earn the most credit when the explanation of search is accurate and the comparison is systematic. Reviewers expect a correct account of crawling, indexing and ranking, competitors chosen for the queries that matter and the same criteria applied to every site. Findings should be specific, measured where possible and honest about the client's weaknesses as well as its strengths. The higher bands also expect the student to explain why each difference affects ranking, not only to report it. Clear priorities connected to the findings show strategic thinking. Scholarly support for claims about search behavior, consistent APA citations, a readable table or structured findings and professional writing complete the grade.
MKT 446 Week 1 help: mistakes to avoid
Common trouble spots include choosing competitors by gut feeling, such as the business across the street, when the real search rivals may be a chain or a directory site. Run the target queries and record who appears. Another frequent gap is listing SEO factors without measuring anything; even a simple count of service pages or a speed test makes a finding credible. Students sometimes praise competitors without explaining what the client should learn from them. Others describe search engines with outdated tricks, such as stuffing keywords into hidden text, which search engines now penalize. Keep the technical explanation brief and correct. Finally, rank your priorities, since the rest of the course builds on this analysis and a clear order gives later assignments a starting point.
Related MKT 446 sample papers
Other MKT 446 week samples
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- MKT 446 Week 3: Website Architecture
- MKT 446 Week 4: Page-Level SEO Strategy
- MKT 446 Week 5: Content and Social Strategy for SEO
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MKT 446 Week 1 questions, answered
What does MKT 446 Week 1 usually cover?
It usually covers how search engines crawl, index and rank pages and asks for a competitive analysis comparing a chosen website with the sites that outrank it for important searches.
Where can I find a free MKT 446 Week 1 sample paper?
The SEO competitive analysis of a composite three-clinic veterinary practice in Idaho, posted above, is a complete Week 1 sample with references.
What is a search competitor?
A search competitor is any website that ranks for the queries you want to win, which may include chains, directories or information sites, not only businesses that sell the same thing.
What should an SEO competitive analysis compare?
Most compare visibility for target queries, content depth, technical health such as speed and errors, backlinks or authority, reviews and local listing accuracy, using the same criteria for every site.
Why does ranking position matter so much?
Eye-tracking and click studies show that users click the top results far more often and tend to trust the search engine's order, so lower positions receive little attention.
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