History and Evolution of SEO

 Search Engine Optimization


SEO help the websites to optimize the content according to the user preferences by improving the quality of  the content along with using relevant keywords. It is the process of improving the ranking and the visibility of the web pages from the search engine.



History of SEO


Seo History


The history of Google begins from 1995 as a student project for Stanford University by Larry Page and Sergey Brin , which later in 1998 formed as the Google search engine organization. In 2011 September 11, when the terrorist attack on World Trade Center happened various users searched to get information regarding the status of World Trade Center and the incident. But Google failed to provide accurate data or web pages reporting the incident. In a further inquiry about it, the engineers reported that the most websites are not crawlable for the search engine ie; the websites doesn't meet the search engine's criteria to become crawlable.  Crawlability can be described as the search engine's ability to access and crawl the contents on a web page. If a website is crawl able then the web crawler can easily access the contents by following links between the pages.

In order to overcome such problems and to achieve public acceptance; Google decided to published Search Engine Optimization practices starter guide. These guild lines helped the webmasters to develop crawl able  web pages or to make changes in existing websites in order to make them optimized.On page / on site SEO is the process of modifying websites to make it crawl able by the search engine. Whereas Off page / off site SEO is the process of making changes outside the websites; such as improving page ranks or by hyperlink analysis.

Google uses the process of 

  • Web Crawling In this the google spider bots browses the World Wide Web and scan the web pages by creating a screenshot . Web search engines and some other websites use web crawling to update their database. Web crawler copy pages for processing by search engine, in which indexes lists the downloaded pages according to the user search. 

  • Caching This is the process of analyzing and categorizing the web pages according to their content and saving into the database. It helps the search engine to provide accurate information based on the given keywords. 

  • Indexing This is the process of listing snippets from the database according to the search of the user. It helps to quickly locate and access the data in a database. 

However along with GOOGLE 's popularity and success, the amount of malpractices, spams and frauds also increased. To get highest ranking in the listing the webmasters started to misuse these guidelines which lead to compromised quality in search results. How did Google overcome such treats, that affected their quality of search content?


Evolution of SEO


Seo Evolution



In the beginning Google Search Engine results were Niche specific or content specific. In which ranking of websites were based on the usage of relevant keywords and the frequency of usage. Therefore the search results will be displayed according to the keywords. However some of the black hat users started to take advantage of keyword usage by 'keyword stuffing'. It is a black hat SEO technique, whereby increasing the frequency of keyword usage to improve the website ranking by the search engine, without improving the quality of website content. 

In order to stop such malpractices, Google made changes to its search algorithm. They made the search results link-specific to improve the quality of the contents. In link-specific search, the websites were ranked based on the hyperlink recommendations by other websites. Thus more number of websites recommended a website's link, then that improved the ranking of the website. Somehow, the black hat users started to misuse this attribute, by selling links to get ranked. Websites started to make money by recommending other websites illegally. This affected the search quality as the websites were getting ranked without any quality content. Therefore, Google again changed the search engine algorithm and made the search results quality-link-specific. Google introduced page ranking rating system in which google rated the web pages based on the trust value of a website. These requirement laid by Google is unknown and those websites that met the criteria were page ranked accordingly. In quality-link-specific ranking the search results were based on link recommendations from these trustworthy or page ranked websites only. Again the black hat users started to buy and sell links to the page ranked websites which Google couldn't control for a certain period of time until Google introduced 'passing the juice' policy.


link juice


In passing the juice policy, when the page ranked website recommend other links, their equity will be passed on to the other website. Which in effect, reduced their page rank gradually. Thus the page ranked websites cannot recommend hyperlinks unnecessarily. When a website recommend a hyperlink, the search engine will consider these links as votes by other websites. Thus the recommended page becomes more valuable and more worth promoting.

After a while, Google introduced a 'NO follow' attribute.  NO follow links were used when a website wants to give reference to another link without passing or sharing their equity power. However, the link juice will not be shared without using the 'NO follow' attribute even if the recommended websites have higher page rank or trust value. 

Code : <rel=Nofollow>


Over the time period of 2006 - 2009, Google hesitated to make changes in Search Engine algorithm. This was mainly due to the function of Google Adwords (now known as Google Ads) and Google Adsense. Since the entire monetizing mechanism can get effected by the change of the algorithm, it can cause major fluctuations in the revenue.


    


google ads

Google Ads (Adwords)

Google Ads is an online advertising program where the sellers or their advertisers can advertise their products or services by paying Google. These ads can appear in Google search results or on other websites like Youtube, social media as well as on mobile apps. Google get paid by these advertisers using Pay-Per-Click (PPC) method. When the search engine users click the ads displayed on the screen and get redirected to respective websites, Google will charge Cost-per-click (CPC) from the advertisers. This cost can vary from keyword to keyword. This is the cost of the prospective customers viewing your advertisements or visiting the websites which may get converted into direct sales. Google Ads can be totally customized according to the advertisers requirements such as, target audience preferences, geographical area to be displayed, age groups etc. 


    


google adsense

Google Adsense

It is an affiliate program where the website or blog owners get monetized for displaying Google Ads in their website. 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 the application is accepted then the can sign in to Google Adsense and make their own choices regarding the displayed ads such as where to display the ads, the responsiveness of the ads, device compatibility etc. After this, Google will generate the HTML code for displaying ads and this code has to be added to the website program. The website will get commission according to the users click on the ads. The payment is made from the advertisers Pay-Per-Click (PPC) amount by Google.


In the year 2008, Google brought in personalized search results in which the user get customized results based on the data collected about them by Google. Based on the user preferences, Google shows personalized ads to benefit the advertisers. Using Google analytics the webmasters can analyze the behavior and trends of the visitors. 

In the year 2009, Google changed the search engine algorithm to rank the websites based on new factors like 

  • User Interactions eg. comments, sales, likes and chats.
  • Bounce rate- it represents the percentage of visitors who visited the web page and exited immediately (bounce) rather than continuing through the links within. If the bounce rate is higher the page rank of the website gets affected negatively and vice versa. 
  • Pogo sticking- if a person search for a keyword and opens a web page but then immediately closes it and moves on to the next search result it is called Pogo sticking. Therefore the first web page's ranking will get affected negatively, whereas the next web page ranking will be improved.

In the year 2010, Google also included the social media signals as a ranking factor. Almost by the time the popularity of social media increased drastically where 80% of internet users spent majority of their time in social media websites. Thus social media became a crucial factor in the website ranking system. The factors that affected the ranking were:-

  • How many people shared the web links?
  • How many people interacted with the post?
  • The influential power of the users and their interactions.



























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