Search Engine Optimization - What It's History Tells Us ECommerce Articles | July 17 Wholesale MLB Shirts , 2007 Search engine optimization is the buzz these days, but it, like so many things, evolved to its present state. The search engine optimization of today is different than it was a few years ago, and for a reason. Hopefully, this short history may clarify why this is so and help prevent the newcomer to Internet marketing from making some basic errors.
Almost any website or article involved with Internet marketing includes the term, "search engine optimization", or SEO Wholesale MLB Jerseys , these days. It's a buzzword everybody uses as if they were all experts on the subject. Time after time, it appears in public forums and commercial advertising alike. Internet marketing "professionals" offer their "SEO services" for fees ranging anywhere from a few bucks to hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Everybody seems poised to offer free advice on how to effectively incorporate SEO into YOUR website.
However, hardly anyone ever comes out and says WHAT search engine optimization really is! As we attempt to review the history of search engine optimization, let's see if the history will also give us a handle on what it is and what it does.
At its simplest, search engine optimization is just the art andor science (often more art than science) of making web pages attractive, or MORE attractive, to the Internet search engines. Without a doubt, an Internet business would be remiss if it did not consider serach engine optimization an integral part of any search engine marketing program or plan.
So Wholesale Hats , how did a need for "optimizing" a website so as to attract the attention of search engines come about?
The relatively arcane art of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) began to shine in the dark ages of the internet around the mid 1990's. Maybe it was the Renaissance, but "dark ages" is easier to spell. However, search engine optimization was pretty basic back in those days. As a matter of fact, many of the available "search engines" back then really weren't much more than web crawling (sorry Spider-Man) directories eventually extracting a bit more data from the site than was submitted originally by the website owner.
Even in those dark days, a good quality search engine was able to perform some discriminatory evaluation and assign a weight, or search engine rank, based on the relevance of the site's informational content, and other data Wholesale Hoodies , such as keywords, description, and textual and graphic content, to certain topics and queries. Unfortunately, although the web crawler, or spider, of the search engine was able to extract a certain amount of data, a large portion of a site's ability to achieve high search engine rank depended on material submitted by the webmaster.
Webmasters aren't stupid Wholesale Shirts , you know, and they soon realized that by using various techniques they could increase their site's search engine rank. One such technique was manipulating content by increasing the usage of keywords, often to huge multiples which might be hidden in the background of the site, for example. In this way they could increase their website's search engine rank. A higher rank meant more visitors, which usually meant more money. A fact the webmasters easily understood.
Enter the search engine algorithm.
"Algorithm" is possibly one of the least understood words commonly found on the Internet. All it means is the system, or instructions, which, in this case Wholesale Jerseys , the search engine follows in its quest to rank websites. To be absolutely silly, a search engine owner could decide that his or her algorithm will include instructions to assign the lowest rank to websites with the word "blue" in them. The point is that the magical, mystical ALGORITHM is simply the set of instructions that has been provided to the software that the search engine uses to assign search engine ranking.
Certainly, search engine algorithms existed previously, but as with criminals and cops, as webmasters got better at sneaking around the existing algorithms, the search engines improved their algorithms to prevent their doing so.
A major change came about as search engines began to rely less and less on the information provided by the webmasters and created software which could investigate the site independently and form conclusions on what it found there. Instead of the webmaster filling in a form providing a title, description Cheap MLB Hats Online , and a bunch of keywords which was checked by a "Mortimer Snerd" indexer which said, "Yup, Mr. Bergen. Them keywords you asked about is there, you bet, and there's a whole bunch of 'em!", the search engine software began to look more deeply for itself and make logical, or at least quasi-logical, determinations about what it found.
BREAK FOR THOSE UNDER 50: Okay Cheap MLB Hoodies Online , 200 per cent of Internet users are people nowhere near my age, so here's the skinny on Mortimer Snerd. Back in the 1930's and into the 60's, I believe, there was a popular ventriloquist named Edgar Bergen, father of Candice Bergen. He mainly worked with two dummies, Charley McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd. Charley McCarthy, although a smart aleck, was usually dressed in tie and tails and seemed to be up on the comings and goings of society. Bergen's other major dummy was Mortimer Snerd Cheap MLB Shirts Online , a hick straight off the turnip truck who believed whatever he was told...and believed it literally.
Back to the subject of SEO.
Okay, rather than just accepting the webmaster's word that keywords "weight loss", "diet", and "exercise" were applicable to the subject matter of the site and then checking to see if those words were there, the software began looking at a long list of factors. It would check the domain name, and the words used in the title. It would check to see how often keywords appeared, how close they were together, and the sequenc