Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become an important aspect in the creation and function of sites. The use of keywords, backlinks, title tags, and more are well-known techniques that allow users to improve their website’s ranking. These techniques did not just appear one day, but through the work of many people, they were created. With the rise of technology, SEO has adapted and allowed sites to thrive. SEO is and will always be continuously advancing, but let’s take it back to the start of where SEO began.
The first website that was ever published was in 1991, but the concept, idea, and story of search engine optimization started in 1997. Jefferson Starship was looking at his website titled “Jefferson Starship” and was disappointed to see that it was ranking on page four of the search engine results page (SERP). Starship, of course, wanted to rank number one on the first page. This idea of ranking high on SERP was a pretty new concept.
1990s
Before it would be officially called search engine optimization, it went through quite a few different names. Some of those names included Search Engine Placement, Search Engine Positioning, Search Engine Ranking, Search Engine Registration, Search Engine Submission, Website Promotion, and Search Engine Marketing (suggested as a successor to SEO).
Early on, the only way to practice SEO was through on-page activities. The users ensured that their content was good and relevant, had enough text, consisted of accurate HTML tags, and had internal and outbound links. The trick was to repeat your keywords throughout the page and meta tags. (This is now considered to be keyword stuffing and is considered to be a black hat practice.)
In 1994, Yahoo was created by Jerry Wang and David Filo, who were both students at Stanford University. Would be able to submit their pages manually to the Yahoo directory in order to index their page. Later in 1996, two other Stanford students named Page and Brin created Backrub. Backrub ranked sites on the inbound link relevancy and popularity. Down the road, Backrub would become Google. The following year, Search Engine Watch was launched by Danny Sullivan. Search Engine Watch provided information on the search engine industry and how to increase ranking.
2000s
Fast forward to the 2000s, where Yahoo decided to partner with Google. The end result of a Yahoo search would say “Powered by Google.” This introduced Google to the world and allowed Google to gain traction. Google started to look at on- and off-page factors and introduced crawlers and PageRank algorithms. Google Toolbar also became available to users to see their PageRank score. Paid search ads also began appearing alongside the natural/unpaid results.
In 2006 not only was YouTube acquired, but Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools also were launched, and XML sitemaps started to gain support. XML sitemaps display to search engines all URLs on the website that are available for crawling. In 2009 Google had a strong grip on the search market, and so Yahoo and Microsoft joined in on a ten-year search deal, calling themselves “The Search Alliance.” This alliance would lead to Bing but remain as the number two search engine and could not overpower Google.
After the 2000s, more advancements, techniques, and technologies would be created. SEO will never have an endpoint, and there will always be new techniques.
Follow the link below by Search Engine Journal to learn more!
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo/seo-history/
3 Responses
Wow, this post is so insightful and interesting! I didn’t know all of the history behind SEO and search engines and how it got started.
Understanding the difference between the eras is not only a cool fact to see but also to understand how SEO started and where it headed over time.
This is something I never learned, but I think it is very prevalent to know with what we are doing. In the bigger picture, this is all relatively new and continues to evolve by the day.