I’ve been asked more than a few times when search engine optimization began and how today’s methods differ from those of yesteryear so I decided blogging about it would give me the opportunity to answer this question.
Search engine optimization actually began in the mid 1990’s. Back in those days the Internet was far more simple than it is now and so was the optimization process. In the mid 90’s optimization could be achieved by having your webmaster submit the URL of a page they wished to have indexed to any of the various search engines. Each submission would then cue a “spider” to crawl that site and return with your meta data. This is a far cry from how search engines look at your site and its various pages today.
Interestingly enough the phrase “search engine optimization” was first seen in a spam message way back in 1997. This is actually quite ironic because one often associates SEO with spam though the two differ greatly.
Back in the 90’s search engines relied mostly on the content of your meta tags. This remained a popular method for indexing for a period of time but problems arose once webmasters began putting keywords in the meta tags that had little or nothing to do with the website being submitted. This all changed though when Google was founded in 1998 and a new more complicated algorithm was introduced into the Internet world which provided for more accurate and detailed search results.
Today’s SEO often involves quality linking, blogging and strong site content so to say that it is far different that it once was would be an understatement. Though your meta information isn’t as important as it once was it is still important to fill them with relevant information.
Should you have any questions about this please feel free to contact us. We hope you have enjoyed a brief history of SEO!
