The Birth Of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Last time, we discussed the early beginnings of how search engines got started. Now, I'd like to discuss how search engine optimization (aka SEO) got started.

Once search engines gained users, it was only a matter of time before people (and businesses) started to recognize that their "position" or "rank" in a search engine for a particular term, made a big difference in the amount of traffic, or visitors, their website received. And with more visitors, can more business opportunities.

Soon, primarily through trial and error, people began trying to "figure out" different ways they could impact their website's "visibility" or rankings for particular terms. This was the birth of SEO.

At first, because the landscape was less competitive (i.e. far-less websites and very few people trying to influence their rankings), simple strategies were very effective in influencing a website's position for a give keyword.

For example, if you wanted you website to rank-well for "shoes", all you had to do was write about shoes on your website.

As more and more websites about "shoes" were created, the search engines had to begin figuring out new ways to differentiate one shoe website from another.

The search engines began looking to other components of web pages to distinguish one web page from another. These included what we call, on-page factors. They include keywords on the page, title tags, meta tags, headers, and where bold or italicized words were used.

In our shoe example, websites that had "shoes" in the title, meta tags, and headers, were considered more relevant to a search for shoes than those that didn't.

Again, the search engines had to evolve. This brings us back to the "unequal democracy".

Because links from other websites are "outside the control" of the website owner, these "backlinks" became the currency of the web.

And so, the main focus of SEO became acquiring both quantity and quality backlinks to one's website. And this largely remains true today.

Which begs the question, how do you get more links?