History and Evolution of Search Engine Optimization

 

History of SEO

Search Engine is a software that is used to search an information from internet .Search Engine optimization is a process of improving the search results in a search engine .It is the process of constant modifications done in a website to improve a website so as to appear in the search result .One of the most popular search engine is Google.

It is believed that SEO was born in 1990's. The Google is a result of a university project of two students Larry Page and Sergey Bin from Stanford University in 1998.Initially it was used as a subdomain under their university website where search results are send to the submitted email id within 24 hours,which later turned as Google search engine.

When terrorist attack of World Trade Center in  September 11,2001 happened, various users enquired google about the World Trade Center. But it was an utter failure for google as it couldn't provide the accurate data or pages related to that search .After further discussions, he search engineers reported that most websites are not crawlable for the search engines .That is the websites doesn't meet the search engine's criteria to scan the details. At this point they realized the need of SEO. Search Engine process has 3 steps:

• Crawling: It is described as the search engines ability to access  and scan/crawl the contents on a web page. 
• Caching: It is the process of analyzing and categorizing the web pages according to the content and saving it to the database.
• Indexing: It is the process of listing web pages from the database according to user search. 

On page/On site SEO:  Process of modifying web page or websites content to make crawlable by the search engine as a part of SEO. 

 Off-page/Off site SEO: Process of modifying outside the web page or websites such as improving page ranks or by hyperlink analysis as apart of SEO.

Webmasters are the persons who maintains the websites and has access to it.

EVOLUTION OF SEO

 

As google became popular the rate of malpractices, spams and frauds increased. For higher rating the webmasters started to misuse the guidelines which effected the quality of search result. Google overcame these threats by SEO evolution.

Initially Google search results were Niche specific/Content specific. Website ranking were based on the usage of relevant keywords and usage frequency. However some of the black hat users started advantage of keyword usage to improve the website ranking with improving content quality. This is known as Keyword stuffing.

Google made some algorithm changes in order to stop such malpractices. They made the search results link specific to improve the content quality. In link specific search, the were ranked based on the hyperlink recommendations by other websites. Thus more the no:of website link recommended by a website, improved the website ranking. This is misused by the black hat user by selling the links to get ranked. This effected the content quality. 

Again Google made some algorithm changes and made the search results Quality link specific. Google

introduced a page ranking system in which google rated the web pages based on the trust value of a website. These requirement laid by google were unknown and those websites that met the criteria were ranked accordingly. The search results were based on link recommendations from these trustworthy or page ranked websites only. But the black hat users again started to bu and sell links to the ranked websites which the google couldn't control. 

 Apart from algorithm changes ,google introduced a new method called Passing the juice. If the webmasters  with high page rank gives link to other web pages, their ranking will be reduced.            Link value is referred to as the value or equity passed from one page to another page. Google introduced 'no follow' mechanism where equity passing is stopped. A tag was introduced ; REL ="no follow" added with the hyperlink .

Google Adwords

It is a pay-per-click online advertising platform that allows advertisers to display their ads on Google's search engine result page. Based on the focus keyword ,businesses  pay to get their advertisements ranked at the top of search result page. It is payed when the user click your ad to visit your website or call your business. 

Google AdSense

 It is an advertisement program where the website or blog owners get revenue for displaying Google Ads in their websites. When a website owner applies for the affiliate program based on the quality and quantity of the content and number of visitors, Google may approve their application. Once it is approved they can sign in to google Adsense and can display ads in between their content by adding the HTML code of the ad. The website earn commission as users click on ads. The payment is based on Pay-Per-Click(PPC) amount by google.

Bounce Rate

It is the percentage of visitors  who visited the web page and exited immediately (bounce) rather than continuing within the link.  The higher the bounce rate, the lower the page rank.

Pogo Sticking

If a user search for a keyword and opens a web page but immediately closes and moves to the next search result it is called pogo sticking. So the first page's ranking will effect negatively, whereas next page ranking will be improved.

User interactions

It is mainly interactions like comments, likes, shares and chats

 Social media Signals

In 2010,Google included social media signals as a ranking factor. By the time, the popularity of social media increased, where  80% of users spent on social media websites. Thus it became a ranking system.