History and Evolution of Search Engine Optimization

What is Search Engine Optimization 

Search engine optimization (SEO), began in the early days of the internet, focusing on the simple tactics like keyword placement. Over time, It has evolved into a sophisticated practice that prioritizes user experience, quality content, and advanced algorithms to improve website visibility and relevance in search engine results.  

What is SEO? 

SEO is the process of optimizing a website to improve its visibility on search engines. This involves using relevant keywords, enhancing site quality, and following best practices to attract more visitors.

HISTORY OF SEO

In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two university students, created Google as part of their academic project. Initially Google operated as a subdomain of their university's website, where search results were emailed to users, a process that took over 24 hours.

 

By 2000, the Internet had become a global phenomenon. However on September, 11 2001, during the tragic Al-Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center in the U.S, Google struggled to provide timely information about the event. The failure highlighted a significant issue: many web pages were not accessible to Google's search engines. This realization made Google's engineers to improve their system to ensure more comprehensive and accurate search results in the future. Google was pointed out that the problem was, not all the web pages were not crawlable.

Now what is crawling ? The Search Engine process through 3 steps. Crawling is a process by which a program called bot (also called robot or spider ) scan a new or or updated page. The snapshot of that page is saved into the database according to their categories. This saving process is called Caching. The search result are retrieved by the process of Indexing.

Now, in order to crawl every web pages in the internet, the web masters who controls the web pages, must be given guidelines on optimization practice. This rise a concern among the engineers in Google since it belongs to their secret files. But at last with no other solutions left, the published 32 page starter guide document called "SEO Starter Guide". 

EVOLUTION OF SEO

In the beginning Google used Niche specific or content specific. The keyword meta tag concept was used in ranking the web pages, were ranking will increase with the occurrence of keywords. This led the webmasters to use keyword stuffing, a black hat SEO technique which is unethical practice where there is over use of keywords within a web page.(There is also a white hat SEO technique which is allowed ethical practices). Realizing this, Google changed its algorithm to link specific. Here the websites will be ranked accordingly. Each hyperlink will be considered as recommendation vote. 

The loophole in this case was that, the website owners started to sell the links to the web masters who were looking for the same. Then Google put forward the quality link specific approach, were ranked out of 0 to 10. The rank refers to the trust value of that web page. Then web page owners with high page ranks started to sell the links to the web masters.

What is passing the juice in SEO

Hence Google introduced a new tactics 'passing the juice'. If the web masters with good page ranking gives link to other web pages, their ranking will be reduced. Link value is referred as the value or equity passed from one page to another page. Google also put forward 'no follow' mechanism, where equity passing is stopped.

       

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Why was Google hesitate to change its algorithms?. 

During the period of 2003 to 2008, Google has gained more popularity and growth and entered the field of advertisement. Google AdWords later changed to Google Ads, or pay per click (PPC) is Google advertising service for business purpose where advertisement are displayed in Google. AdSense is a program run by Google through which website owners could display the business advertisement in their websites. The change in algorithm will result in the change in the keywords which will effect the viewers website visibility which leads to the decrease in Googles revenue.

Introduction of Google Suggest

In the year of 2009 interactive personalized search result was introduced based on people's interaction, the websites were ranked. If there is an increase in an interaction there is an increase in the ranking accordingly. 

What interaction that means of : 

• Frequent use
• Revisit
• Suggestions
• Shares on social media 
• Comments
• Subscribers 

People who uses the website, they leave immediately the website  without any interaction, it will negatively effect the website. This bouncing situation is called Bounce rate.

Social media signals

During the year of 2010, Social media signals were introduced which means sharing the hyperlinks through social media and increasing the ranking accordingly. The reason why Google bought the update because Social media became a major role during the year of 2010. When there is more interaction in social media there is an increase in ranking this increases the influential power. Getting promoted from influential media also ranks the website.