History and Evolution of SEO

SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of optimizing your blog posts to rank higher in search engine results (like google) by making your content easy for search engines to crawl and index. It involves strategic keyword use. keywords are the words people search into search engines to find information.

 

• The history of google starts with a project work of two college students.
• In 1998 they started a company and form some google websites. At that time google take more time to show the results approximately 24 hours also, the search results got through emails. But gradually they resolved the time delay issues faced by people when they use google search engine.
• The turning point of google is connecting with the World trade center attack. After this incident google got more popularity in society. World trade center, the most important and tallest building in world situated in US was attacked by the terrorist activity of the al-Qaeda group on September 11, 2001. They destroyed the building by planes, and the entire people was shocked after the effect of this incident. But google not give more information and vital evidence of this important incident. Then google officials raised the question why google not give more information about the world trade center attack? Search engineers replied to officials that google is not crawlable.
• Inside google a program known as web crawlers available, which also called bots, robots, spiders etc. This web crawler crawls or scans a webpage and study what content carries the webpage this process is known as CRAWLING. Then take a snapshot and store this in database. This is known as CACHING. The stored data are categorized like a librarian arrange books in different shelfs under based on various partitioning methods. The saved data's listed by google when people search. This google listings are known as INDEXING. Google failed to clear these 3 steps in world trade center attacked time.
• They think how to upgrade google and how to increase crawlability of google. The search engineers replied to officials that only the Webmasters can resolve the issue; webmasters are the website custodians have the right to manage, and modifications done in a website.
• Google officials planned an idea that make a document which include how to optimize a webpage and hand over this to webmasters for optimization practices. Some engineers disagree with the idea because they are not ready to reveal google privacy. Finally, they agree and prepared a 32-page pdf file for optimization practices, the document is known as SEO starter guide. This guide is very useful, and they practice more ideas and workout it on different sites, gradually increase crawlability of google.

After the discovery of SEO starter guide webmasters try more optimizations practices. 

On page optimization: The modifications which are applied in a website, while doing SEO by webmasters for increase the crawling procedure and change their ranking position to high. On page and on-site optimization are similar. But we can distinguish both of them.

on page means we make modifications in one of the pages in a website. On site optimization make modifications in different pages in a website.

e.g.: A group of teams done SEO in different pages. After the on-page optimization google can easily crawl a page, by changing color, title, contents, design etc. After using this method some pages are successfully ranked and they got visits. But over activities causes poor quality results, because these over modifications some time google record it as a spam activity.

Google was a Content specific Search Engine

Due to low quality results google update its algorithms. In starting time, google indexing method is "content specific way" or Niche specific, niche means topic. Which site get more focusing keyword the google rank that site first. Google's ranking procedure factor is number of key words in content specific time. Then the webmasters are trying for including maximum keywords in their sites. some of webmasters follow key word stuffing practices.

key word stuffing: Is a black hat SEO technique, generally it's a practice work for increasing number of keywords in their website.

Black hat SEO technique: Un ethical activities for a specific purpose. 

White hat SEO technique: Ethical practices only follow SEO starter guidelines.

Day by day the keyword stuffing practices increases, and it leads to poor quality search outputs. Then google change the working method to Link specific.

Link specific method: For example, two websites are available, which website got more links from other websites that would be ranked. The links that we get from other websites are counted by google as recommendation votes. In this case links are factor to decide ranking positions. Automatically webmasters are focused on links, some of them are trying to buy links from different websites. in effect, the quality of search results again decreased. Google found another way to overcome this issue. That is quality link specific method.

Quality link specific method:  Google rank a website according with the links reached the website from other quality websites. The quality of a website decided by page rank system.

Page rank system: A rating system awarded by google itself, from the value 0 to 10. 0/10-page ranked website means low trustable. 10/10 means most trustable site. simply says, page rank= trust value. In that time webmasters try to buy links from page ranked website to make their websites page rank higher for ranking purpose. The over activity of link selling causes poor quality search results. So, google introduce another way passing juice method.

Passing juice method: Also known as link juice or link equity refers authority value passing from one website to other by hyperlinks. When a website share links for another website that websites equity passes to other and page rank also decreased. But a website got more links from page ranked websites, that links counted as recommendation votes by google, in effect the page rank increased. Moreover, a solution of this equity passing introduced by google by an attribution rel=no follow. For example, a page uses some reference links for supporting their contents, with the use of rel=no follow attribution the equity never passed, hence the page rank remained.

e.g.: <a href="http://www.google.com" rel=no follow>google</a>

Google afraid to make changes in its algorithms from the years 2003 to 2008 because the changes arise some issues on google.

Key updates and context of the era (2003-2008)

Introduction of Google Adwords

2000: In this era only some of people use google, but already an advertising program exists known as google adwords or google ads.

google ads is an online platform where businesses pay to display digital advertisements, product listings and contents across google search network. It's a payment promotion method via google platform to improve their business.

Introduction of Google Adsense

2003: Another program parallel to google ads is google AdSense. Is a free program that allows website publishers to earn revenue by displaying targeted advertisements next to their online content. Google approve license for AdSense when our website ad friendly. Getting income for each click of visitor is the income plan of google ad sense. After getting 100 dollars google transferred commission amount to the publisher's account. webmasters apply SEO techniques to their websites for getting more visits and AdSense revenue purposes.

But these algorithms updates affect page rank of websites in effect, their income decreased and also google income doubly decreases. This was the reason that google afraid to make modifications in their algorithms.

Introduction of Personalised search results

2008: Personalised search results and auto suggest googling features are introduced. Automated key words are shown by google when users search any content.

2009: Ranking process depends on user interactions.

Bounce rate: Is the percentage of visitors who land on a website page and leave without taking any further action (clicking a link or viewing another page).

Introduction of social signals as a ranking factor

2010: Social media influences ranking procedure. Because users spend majority of time in social media platforms like face book, LinkedIn etc. Which website more shared in social media platforms that website ranked first. Gradually ranking factor depends social media influencing value, when everyone uses social medias. A person's influential power can we use in ranking process by sharing websites through their social media platform.