History and Evolution of SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of getting traffic from the free, organic, editorial or natural results on the search engines. It is the name given to the activity that attempts to improve search engine ranking. in many respects, it is simply qualify control for websites. Google is one of the most prominent search engine.

HISTORY OF SEO

In 1998, two students invented this as their university project. In the beginning, this was used as their collage search domain under university website. The search results were send to the submitted email in 24 hours or more. Internet was widely used around the globe by 2000. On September 11th 2001, World Trade Centre in America was attacked by Al-Qaeda. At this period google failed to provide news regarding the attack for the people who borrowed for this topic. This made google restless that this incident was about the world's largest building of that time. Google officials then arranged a meeting regarding to discuss about the topic. The problems pointed out by the engineers were that the available webpages were not crawlable for the google.

So, engineers came up with a solution that they could only do some thing if the webmasters(the person who maintains a particular website) help them to optimize the documents, so the were given guidelines on optimization practice, so that can make a huge difference. This rose a concern between the engineers because it belongs to their private data of google. then finally with no other solution 32 page "SEO Starters Guide" was published with basic SEO practice. Thus Search Engine Optimization started.

The steps of search engine process:                                                                                            

Crawling is the process by which a program called bot, scan a new or updated page. The snapshot of that page will be saved into the database according to their categories. This saving process is called caching. The search results are retrieved and that process is known as indexing. 

EVOLUTION OF SEO

In the starting stage of the evolution, Niche specific or Content specific was used by Google. This method was used to top rank the web pages, and the more repetition of keywords in a web page helped to gain the top ranking for a webpage. So Keyword Stuffing technique was used in a webpage to increase the ranking of a webpage, which is also a Black Hat SEO technique(unethical practice) where there is unnecessary over use of a keywords. This is also known as Key word Meta Tag. Regarding this situation there was an algorithm change done by the google that is content specific webpage was changed to link specific for the ranking.  In this, recommending and receiving most website links will be ranked accordingly. Each hyperlink will be considered as recommending vote and link specific websites will be considered as recommendable website. It was changed to quality link specific to maintain the quality of the content. The loophole in this situation was that the website owners started to sell the website links to the webmasters who where looking for the same for ranking. So to bring the Quality link specific Page Rank rating out of 10 was introduced. Then ranking system was stopped or hidden from the viewers. Page ranking means to have trust value of the web page. 2013 was the last time google checked the page ranking. There were also other factors that were considered along with the links. The web pages with high page ranking started to sell their links to the web masters and then Google introduced a new tactics that is known as 'Passing the Juice'. If the web pages with high page ranking sell their links to the webmasters then their page ranking will be turned down. Link juice is the term used in SEO world to refer to value or equity passed from one page to another page. This value is passed through hyperlinks. Search engine will see the links as votes by other websites that the web page is valuable and worth promoting. Google also put forward 'no follow attribution', where equity passing was stopped. 

On 23rd October, 2000, Google introduced Google AdWords and later it was changed to Google Ad or PPC(Pay Per Click) that is a google service for advertising, companies can advertise by displaying the advertisement in google for business purpose. In 2003, Google started an alternative that is AdSense. AdSense is a way to earn money for the webpages simply by showing advertisements of advertisers who want to promote their company or products. This will affect the change in keywords of the webpage and this will affect the visitors of the webpage which can lead to decrease in revenue of the google.

In 2009, Personalized search results and auto suggestions were introduced Google Suggest. Google became interactive with the users. Even interaction with the users became one of the ranking method for google. When visitors subscribe a web page google takes it as a great trust value towards the web page. Pogo sticking method was 1st published in Moz.com, it is a method when a visitor visits the web page and doesn't not spend time more than 3,4 seconds and then click the second web page given in the search results and spends more time in second webpage then google consider that page as more informative and will give top ranking to the second page. Bounce rate is when a visitor clicks the webpage  and don't spent more than 2,3 seconds and go back. When Bounce rate is more the ranking and trust value of the webpage will go down. Net issues can also cause increase in bounce rate because google will get the alert of clicking the webpage by a visitor, if the internet connection is not fast then it can cause bounce rate, So to avoid that the web page should be fast. More than a search engine google became everyone's voice assistant known as Google assistant.

In 2010, Social media signal became very important because social media played a very important role in the society and google started to rank the webpage according to the interactions done through social media. Social media's like Facebook, Orkut, Instagram helped to increase the ranking rate. Social media influential power also played a very important role because when a post is uploaded on any social media and if there are influential personalities doing interaction through the social media then if there is more interaction happening, there will be more ranking for the webpage. That was the last stage of evolution of SEO.