The Changing Tides of SEO
(Page 1 of 4 )
Search engine optimization has become a complex numbers game, more similar to shifting sands beneath the high tide rather than building a rock-solid foundation for a successful website. When SEO first emerged, it was an experience where you dived into a site head first, rolled up your sleeves and got to work adding keywords, Meta tags, headings and anything to attract the attention of a search engine. SEO used to be a definite hands-on operation, just requiring an initial revamping of the site, then letting the SEO work its magic.
These days, however, it seems that SEO is more about analyzing trends, poring over stats, and watching patterns of search engine behaviors; then, anticipating the next move or change, and trying to divine which way the debris will fall once the storm recedes. Lately, SEO has been feeling more like an analytical game than an actual job. Why is good SEO seemingly much harder to achieve these days, and have SEOs finally just missed the boat altogether? Without whining too much about the "good ole days" I want to look at what SEO used to be, if for nothing more than comparison purposes. Then we'll take a look at what it's evolved into, and why SEOs have a hard time staying afloat.
The Old SEO Tides
When SEO was just beginning as an industry, the major emphasis was placed on Meta tags. Keyword, Title, and Description Tags were almost what made or broke a website in the area of search engine ranking. While it wasn't as simplified as I just made it sound, it was certainly somewhat easy to influence search engine ranking as long as you stayed one step ahead of the search engines; since the search engines didn't change their methodology as much as they have in the last few years, you could optimize your website pages and leave them alone for a while, and not having to worry about whether your search engine ranking would change from the time you went to bed to the time you had your first cup of coffee.
It was a time where the Internet had essentially established itself as a serious communication medium, and it was clear it wasn't just a fad or was going away any time soon. It was a time when the term "search engine" was becoming more well known every day, and we expected the search engines to sometimes find results and other times not, since search engines were so primitive that they were nothing more than name matching filters.
SEO tactics weren't all that honest it seemed, and it certainly spawned the negative aspects of SEO. Doorway pages, keyword stuffing and white on white text appeared to be common practices. We look back now and think how silly it all seemed, but we once thought the world was flat, too.
I would like to point out a few important milestones of the SEO industry that, more than anything, created huge ripples in the way we optimize websites, as seen in the results of their wake. While there are certainly many things that have forged the SEO industry into the vast machine it is today, we honestly don't have time to cover them all. After looking at these milestones in the history of SEO, we will look at why these things have prompted the changes that have come about, and how they have provided the stepping stones for the SEO industry to become what it is at this very moment in time.
Next: The Birth of the Internet >>
More Search Optimization Articles
More By Jennifer Sullivan Cassidy
/ 11 
