The Changing Tides of SEO - First Major SEO Firm Emerges, and Search Engine Spam is Discovered
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In 1994, the first major SEO firm recognized for its optimization achievements was Iprospects. It was also in 1994 that companies began experimenting with the concept of search engine optimization. The original term for search engine optimization or search engine marketing at that time was web site promotion. The early emphasis of search engine optimization (or rather, web site promotion) was solely upon the submission process of websites into the search engines and directories.
Within less than a year, the first automated submission software packages were released. Shortly thereafter, search engine spam reared its ugly head for the first time. This was a result of eager webmasters' realization that they could swamp search results pages by over-submission and become listed and indexed for hundreds of pages. Search engines received a severe wake-up call, as spammers began in earnest. The search engines have been playing catch-up ever since.
Pay Per Click was Introduced
In 1997, Pay Per Click advertising was spawned with the creation of GoTo.com, which later became known as Overture. Its ideology was based on the concept that search at this time was widely unreliable and the results could be much better if they were human edited. They quickly sought and gained funding; then they began selling traffic on a cost-per-click bid-style auction business model.
The ebb and flow of the Internet over the last decade has truly been filled with some of the most intense changes and milestone achievements that even the technology world has been used to, and the Internet itself has forever changed the way we look at and access information. Thus, the SEO industry refines its methods to enable sites with that information to make their way to the surface for air.
The New Wave
The latest fashion trend of SEO is analytics. With the introduction of such programs as Google Analytics, we have seen the shift in the trends of simple keyword analysis to more complicated aspects of conversion ratios, and even semantics. SEO is about watching, researching, and often times, simply waiting for the results to appear. It's becoming a longer process, and in this day and age, where people want what they want RIGHT NOW, it's much more difficult to convince a website owner that they must be patient. However, more often than not, watching and waiting is what is required; it's certainly not easy.
I love to learn, which means that research is my cup of tea; the love of learning is part of my personality, and makes me who I am. But I also have the urgent side to my personality. I want to see the results tomorrow, not next month, or in three months. I want to see the fruits of my labor upon completion of my project. This can be a bad trait in an SEO, but it also has the good along with it. The good part of this is that I can relate and empathize with my client, and know their need for want-it-right-now SEO.
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