History of SEO

Santa Barbara SEO History

Internet Marketing Background

Web site development has been a growing sector since the inception of the commercial and social uses of the Internet in the early 90s. Practically every corporation today has a Web site; and most maintain dozens of sites for different purposes and circumstances. As a point of reference, General Motors, owns and operates well over 10,000 unique Web sites between their Internet and Intranet programs.

In 1995 there were fewer than 1,000 web development companies in the United States alone and in 2007 there are over 40,000 such companies. The web development industry is expected to grow over 20% by 2010. The growth of this industry is being pushed by large businesses wishing to sell products and services to their customers and to automate business workflow, as well as the growth of many small web design and development companies.

In addition, cost of Web site development and hosting has dropped dramatically during this time. Instead of costing tens of thousands of dollars, as was the case for early websites, one can now develop a simple web site for less than a thousand dollars, depending on the complexity and amount of content. Smaller Web site development companies are now able to make web design accessible to both smaller companies and individuals further fueling the growth of the web development industry. As far as web development tools and platforms are concerned, there are many systems available to the public free of charge to aid in development.

A popular example is LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL PHP), which is usually distributed free of charge. This fact alone has manifested into many people around the globe setting up new Web sites daily and thus contributing to increase in web development popularity. Another contributing factor has been the rise of easy to use WYSIWYG web development software, most prominently Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe Dreamweaver. Using such software, virtually anyone can develop a Web page in a matter of minutes. Knowledge of HyperText Markup Language (HTML), or other programming languages is not required.

The next generation of web development tools uses the strong growth in LAMP and Microsoft .NET technologies to provide the Web as a way to run applications online. Web developers now help to deliver applications as Web services which were traditionally only available as applications on a desk based computer.

Instead of running executable code on a local computer, users are interacting with online applications to create new content. This has created new methods in communication and allowed for many opportunities to decentralize information and media distribution. Users are now able to interact with applications from many locations, instead of being tied to a specific workstation for their application environment.

Examples of dramatic transformation in communication and commerce led by web development include e-commerce. Online auction sites such as eBay have changed the way consumers consume and purchase goods and services. Online resellers such as Amazon.com and Buy.com (among many, many others) have transformed the shopping and bargain hunting experience for many consumers.

What all of this growth and evolution translates into are millions and millions of Web sites. How does the end user get to these Web sites? Traditionally, users must have the specific Web site address known as a Uniform Resource Locator, or URL. The alternative is to use search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN. With the tremendous volume of Web sites and anticipated exponential growth, the search results are becoming increasingly valuable. The only way to ensure a high ranking is successful search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is the art and science of effectively applying the rules and conventions search engines require in order to ensure a high ranking.

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The Importance of SEO

As of May, 2007, statistic reports show that there are around 451 million users, 42,676,709 domains, 33,511,875 websites and over two billion pages. Consider the following analogy to understand the importance of SEO. Every city, regardless of size, has 1 primary street, often Main St. or State St. There are a fixed number of prime locations on these streets. Property owners and renters are always vying for those spots. It works much the same on-line. The ‘city’ is the search phrase, for instance, "New York City Real Estate".

Search engines provide the results; but only 10 on the first page and 10 on the second page, and so on. The Main St. in this case are the first ten results. While there are no definitive statistics, it is clear that the VAST majority first click on a top 10 result. In fact, almost every click is one of the first 5 results. Thus, much like owning or renting property on the most visited street in any given city, it is critical to own/rent in the most viewed and clicked upon search results.

SEO is not a new industry. The concept of SEO has been around for as long as search engines have been around, since the mid 90s. However, the way to get to top 10 results has changed and continues to change on a regular basis. What used to be a matter of editing certain elements on a particular Web site has become a complex process of understanding all of the elements that influence rankings and assembling the correct package for the particular instance.

While most SEO companies agree on the general criteria necessary to create effectively high rankings; the methodology and approach differ widely. In the broadest of terms, there are two types of SEO, Black Hat and White Hat. Black Hat is the use of techniques and tools that literally ‘trick’ the search engines by either cloaking relevancy or embedding false content.

Black Hat SEO is looked down upon by industry leaders and certainly by search engine companies. In fact, companies that have practiced Black Hat SEO have been banned from Google in the past; including any ancillary companies. One of the better known examples of this occurrence took place with BMW.

The reason for the ban is likely to be that the BMW websites have been caught employing a technique used by black-hat search engine optimizers: doorway pages. German and international bloggers last week were quick to spread the news.

As you may know, a doorway page is stuffed full of keywords that the site feels a need to be optimized for; however, as opposed to real pages, this doorway is only displayed to the Googlebot. Human visitors will be immediately redirected to another page upon visit. And that’s exactly what happened at BMW.de, as reported Wednesday.

While BMW almost immediately removed the pages after the news broke (after having them live for almost 2 years), apparently it was too late. German BMW are now suffering what is known as the "Google death penalty": a ban from almost any imaginable top search result, and a degrading of the PageRank to the lowest possible value.

The alternative to Black Hat SEO, and the more common practice, is aptly named White Hat SEO. White Hat SEO is the application of the Google Webmaster rules and other techniques that search engines publish and encourage.

A summary of these rules and techniques include:

• Proper Web design
• Proper HTML coding and linking
• Relevant content in the right places
• Relevant links to and from the respective Web site
• High level of management of content via updated articles, blogs, and copy

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