SEO down the ages, a brief overview
From humble beginnings to a hyper competitive specialization
The Beginnings of an Industry
The first Web search engines started around 1990s. Among the early pioneers in the field were Yahoo! and Infoseek. Yahoo! is still a big internet portal, though it no longer uses its own technology for search, having outsourced the function to Bing. Infoseek was where Baidu co-founder Robin Li worked before he left the US to the mainland. It was later acquired by Disney, and is no longer in operation.
In its initial days, search was mistaken to be a function of categorizing. Many search engines organized their indices as directories, and hired librarians to categorize and classify content. Online directories still exist, and the Open Directory Project (ODP ) is well known, but search has outgrown the directory phase.
With the new search engines like Alta Vista, AOL, Inktomi came complicated algorithms. SEOs followed with the process of keyword stuffing.The actual phrase 'Search Engine Optimization' was first used in 1997, though who exactly coined it is unknown. It was found in one of the meta tags used in the website of Danny Sullivan, regarded as the founder of the industry. The latter half of the '90s saw the use of the metrics located on off-pages to rank websites. Google innovated with its PageRank algorithm, successfully filtering out unwanted pages which usually dominate the search engine pages. Thus terms like link networks, paid links, content optimization, PageRank sculpting, etc. became popular. And search engines began using more of the available resources into focusing on optimization and weeding out spam.
In its initial days, search was mistaken to be a function of categorizing. Many search engines organized their indices as directories, and hired librarians to categorize and classify content. Online directories still exist, and the Open Directory Project (ODP ) is well known, but search has outgrown the directory phase.
With the new search engines like Alta Vista, AOL, Inktomi came complicated algorithms. SEOs followed with the process of keyword stuffing.The actual phrase 'Search Engine Optimization' was first used in 1997, though who exactly coined it is unknown. It was found in one of the meta tags used in the website of Danny Sullivan, regarded as the founder of the industry. The latter half of the '90s saw the use of the metrics located on off-pages to rank websites. Google innovated with its PageRank algorithm, successfully filtering out unwanted pages which usually dominate the search engine pages. Thus terms like link networks, paid links, content optimization, PageRank sculpting, etc. became popular. And search engines began using more of the available resources into focusing on optimization and weeding out spam.
Now, a Fortune 500 Priority
The SEO industry has come of age along with the mainstream web search. It is an industry of its own with numerous professional organizations. SEO conferences like Search Marketing Expo (SMX) and Search Engine Strategies (SES) are held in five continents and are major events attracting thousands as audience. It's also a very challenging industry where constant change, led by Google's regular updates to its algorithm, is the norm. With eCommerce growing in volume across the world, the demands on the SEO industry to rank-up web pages in organic search will only increase.
It's now common practise for Fortune 500 companies as well as smaller companies to hire SEOs.
It's now common practise for Fortune 500 companies as well as smaller companies to hire SEOs.
want to partner with us for SEO? drop us a mail.
We offer SEO Basic Consulting service for customers. Please click the link to get more details available in Microsoft Bookings Page