History of Search Engine Optimization
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The process of search engine optimization began in the mid-90s with the process of web cataloguing by search engines. The concept of SEO or search engine optimization was born when site owners recognized the value of having their sites ranked by search engines. As searchers scan a search results page from top to bottom, looking for a relevant result placement of a website at or near the top of the rankings increases the chances of searchers visiting a site. However this is not always the right strategy for every website.
As early search engines relied heavily on factors controlled by the webmaster, such as such as the information of keyword meta tag that provided a guide to the page’s content, which was not always accurate, they suffered from manipulation of ranking, which led to ranking of pages for irrelevant searches.
The success of a search engine depends on the relevance of its search results to the search items. Since depending on the webmaster led to irrelevant search results the search engines sought to correct this by developing more complex algorithms difficult for the webmasters to manipulate. In 1998 Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google. Google relied on both on-page and off-page factors. Whereas earlier search engines considered only on-page factors such as keyword frequency, meta tags, headings, links and site structure, Google took into consideration off-page factors such as PageRank (PageRank is a number calculated by a mathematical algorithm that rates the prominence of pages based on the quality and strength of inbound links) and hyperlink analysis as well.
However, webmasters gradually developed methods that could influence the efficacy of PageRank. There were link building tools, buying and selling of links, and link farms that involved the creation of malicious sites for the sole purpose of link spamming.