SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization or Search Engine Optimizer.[1] It is a process used by web masters to increase the number of visitors to a particular website by trying to move up its ranking on the search engine search results page. A website with a higher rank placement in the search page will have a better chance to get more internet users to view the website.
Internet users research different things on the internet. SEO targets the different types of searches including academic image, local, news and video.
Search Engine
Search engine is a program that was created to organize data and help users find information on the internet by just typing a keyword. prior to the development of search engines, the world wide web was a collection of File Transfer Protocols (FTP), a standard network of protocol which is used to transfer date from one host to another through a TCP-based network. Because of the rapid increase of internet users, organizing the FTP files shared in the internet became a requirement. The search engine was created to provide easy access and navigation of information in the world wide web.[2]
Different Search Engines
Alam Emtage a student from Mc Gill University in Montreal developed the first search engine called Archie in 1990. It is an index or archive of files stored to an unknown FTP sites to a given network of computers. After one year in 1991, another search engine named Gopher was created by Mark Mc Cahill from the University of Minnesota.
In 1993, Excite search engine was created by six undergraduate students from the University of Stanford to improve the relevance of searches in the internet.
In 1994 several search engines was created such as Yahoo by David Filo and Jerry Young; Web Crawler by Brian Pinkerton, a computer science engineering student from the University of Washington; Lycos which was developed by Dr. Michael Mauldin and a team of researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University and Infoseek which as created by Steve Kirsch.
In 1995, Alta Vista was developed by scientists at Digital Equipment Corporation’s (DEC) Western Research Laboratory in Palo Alto, California and in 1996 Inktomi was developed by Eric Brewer while [[Ask was developed by Garret Gruener and David Warthen and the search engine was launched as Ask Jeeves in 1997. Subsequently Google was created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin both students from the University of Stanford. Google was incorporated in 1998 and it became the most popular search engine today.
In 1998, Bill Gross launched Overture while MSN Search was offered by Microsoft as part of their service offering.The latest search engine that was developed was alltheweb in 1999. It was purchased by Overture in 2003 and eventually acquired by Yahoo after purchasing Overture.[3]
Beginnings of SEO
According to SEO experts, website owners realized the importance of being in the top place of the search engine to increase the revenue of their businesses in the middle of 1990s.
Danny Sullivan, is considered among the pioneers who started optimizing the search engine. In 1995, one of his clients inquired why his website doesn't on top of the search engine. This prompted Sullivan to find the information how to increase the ranking of a certain website on the search engine. In 1996, he published the Webmasters Guide to Search Engine and subsequently created the Search Engine Watch.[4]
About the same year, Bruce Clay, President and CEO of Bruce Clay, Inc. started optimizing the websites of his clients by editing pages for the search engine Infoseek. During that time Google was not yet established and he doesn't need to develops links because it is not a requirement for the engine algorithm.<ref>The History of SEO Bruce Clay</seo>
In 1999, Danny Sullivan organized the first SEO strategies conference in San Francisco. It was attended by approximately 200 individuals and Bruce Clay was one of the speakers.
Other SEO pioneers include Greg Boser, Christine Churchill, John Audette, Derrick Wheeler, and Marshall Simmonds.