History of SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

History of SEO -The 10-year history of search engine optimisation (SEO) is closely tied to the underlying growth of the internet and the development of its attendant search technologies.  With the growth in value, the rewards for success in the marketing battle have risen significantly.

With an increasingly crowded internet, search has become a more important component of commercial success. Without search, how is your site found? As a result, attempts to both legitimately manage or illegitimately manipulate search results have become motivated by the greater rewards on offer.

The three driving forces have been:

1. The growth and commercial value of the internet consumer base.
2. The rising intensity of competition in online market categories.
3. The increasing sophistication of search technologies.

History of SEO

The early days of search engine optimisation go back to mid-1990s when the internet first began to attract significant numbers of web sites and users. In those early days, emphasis was on the submission stage – getting your site placed into as many search engines as possible. The most important aspect of a search engine algorithm appeared to be entirely “on-page” based and was focused almost exclusively around meta tags and their relate text.

Search algorithms could be decoded simply by analysing the results pages. During the late 1990s, ethical SEOs and spammers alike realised that search engine results could be manipulated by the simple process of adjusting a site’s meta tags to match the desired keywords. During this period there were many crude attempts by spammers to stuff meta tags with irrelevant but popular search terms. Famous spamming keyword meta tags have included “Britney Spears” on sites with nothing to do with Britney Spears. It just happened to be that Britney was one of the most searched for terms.

Google’s arrival in 1998 and the introduction of its “off-page”, link based, approach signalled the beginning of the end for the exclusively meta tag driven approach. Google was really the first engine to establish that sites carrying similar content had a propensity to be linked. Google’s strength appeared that the relevance of its results was less vulnerable to the orthodox spamming techniques of its day. Search users were attracted by its relevance to their search needs. In essence the key to success under the Google algorithm was not what your site said about itself but what the links from other sites said.

The Google spider apparently ignores keyword meta tags entirely and only the MSN spider apparently places any emphasis on them at all. Abuse of the keyword meta tag by spammers led to its downfall. Google’s subsequent rise to dominance eventually transformed the SEO industry. Google’s rise in popularity forced many competitor search engines to fall by the wayside or to be consolidated with larger parents such as Yahoo.

Due to Google’s success, both Yahoo and Microsoft, through its newly independent and revised MSN search engine, have had to take on board many of the features of Google’s approach. The influence of inbound links continues to increase.