Search engine optimization is the art and science of making web pages attractive to internet search engines. In SEO the only constant is change. The search engine algorithms are changing and evolving in quest of the perfect search results. SEO practitioners have to change with these Algorithms. To understand where we are going, it always good to look at where we have been. This is a short history of SEO.

In 1994 the search engines Lycos, Yahoo! And Galaxy were launched and in 1995 SEO had its beginnings with the use of keywords. By 1997 META tag optimization was very important.

In 1998 SEO was relatively easy and there was a shift toward looking at off page factors such as link popularity. Link farms became prominent. Spamming was rampant and this is also the year Google was founded.

In 2000 pay-per-click (PPC) was introduced first with Overture and later with Google. This is important because PPC would become the source of money to fund the search engines. The search engines need to attract users in order to attract advertisers.

By 2001, Google becomes the dominant search engine. In 2002-2003 There was a major consolidation and reshuffling where Google bought Blogger and Yahoo purchase All The Web, Alta Vista and Inktomi.

In 2005 Google introduced the XML-Sitemap format to allow easier indexing and crawling of websites. This was accepted and used by MSN and Yahoo in 2006.

There has been a constant improvement in search algorithms by the search engines. Today META Tags have very little to do with getting top rankings and visible body text and off page factors have a high importance. Algorithms, search engine patents and SEO strategies are changing on a monthly basis.

What is new in 2007?

1. Business blogs have become a quick and effective to get you very good search engine visibility and that good search rankings can increase your brand value. More on Blog Marketing
2. The internal databases of Google will be updated every 1-2 days instead of once every 3-4 weeks. This means more variance will be in the Google rankings for webmasters.
3. Universal search by Google is going to make it harder to rank high for some key words, as you are now competing against videos, images, news and the like, as opposed to just websites.

Who is the real winner in all this? It is the user of the search engines who get better and faster search results. The search engine that delivers the best results, wins the advertising dollars. Right now the clear winner is Google.

Doug Williams, Internet Marketing Consultant

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 20th, 2007 at 1:09 pm and is filed under Internet Marketing, SEO Strategies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.