SEO What's all the fuss about

Search Engine Optimization or "SEO" is a buzzword today. In fact, it is almost impossible to find a web design company that does not also offer search marketing and optimization services 

However, this was not always the case

This field of expertise is related to web search engines and aims to bring the website to as high a place as possible on search results

In the following sections, I will count some milestones in the development of the subject, which began as quite a secretive practice which was made by very few, and has already become an actual profession with its own category in the Yellow Pages

 

Infancy

SEO is related to search engines, which in fact did not exist in the early years of the internet

The need for search engines arose when websites transformed from being a technical tool for sharing information between universities (and military bases), into popular media with an increasing rate of spread

In the beginning, there were three primary ways of finding websites

The first method is self-discovery - the user browses a certain website, encounters a link that takes him to another site, and from there to another site, etc. One simply "skips" or "surfs" from site to site. And if he ever wants to revisit certain sites, he writes the address down on paper or saves it in the browser's bookmarks

The second method is already an attempt to make things more orderly - indexes

These are websites whose purpose is to be a kind of "yellow pages" of the Internet, in which the sites are organized by categories and are listed with a short description for each

Probably the most famous index is YAHOO, which started out as such. Its big advantage was also perhaps a disadvantage, and that was the fact that the index was built by people, who actually checked each site, read what it was about, and classified it accordingly. It's good because it's accurate. It's not good because it does not scale well, and at some point it is simply impossible to keep up

The third type of website search tool is the search engine, where the indexing of the sites and their sorting is done automatically by software

The most famous search engine is Google, which first appeared in the 90's, initially as another search engine alongside many others, but as time went on it became a synonym for internet search and even entered the dictionary as such

A.A.A. Google and "Mom is a donkey"

 After the Internet became popular, it has also begun to be used as a business tool

Business owners have used it as a medium to showcase their organization or products, as a new type of business card, or as a virtual showcase. They also started selling products and services through the site. Site owners in general and business website owners have realized that it is not enough to build a website, but one needs to make sure that people know about its existence and find it easily. Here the search engines played a major role. Publishers understood this and made sure their sites were listed in indexes and engines. Anyone involved in marketing knows that a key part of this area is understanding consumer behavior and adapting the marketing effort to it. Even in the days before the appearance of the Internet in our lives, business owners, who listed themselves in the Yellow Pages, soon learned that prospects are usually satisfied with contacting businesses listed in the first places of each classification unless they were looking for a particular business they knew by name. So, some business owners even decided to change the company name to one that starts with the letter A. Even if it had nothing to do with their real name. This is how records like A.A.A. Samson & sons appeared

The equivalent in search engines is the fact that people searching for a particular term, usually tend to go for the results that appear first or at least on the first page of the search results, certainly when, as the web spreads, the number of results pages increases exponentially. Trying to understand how search engines work, such as understanding how the entries are listed in a Yellow Pages book, has become necessary to translate the behavior of the surfers, to their eventual landing on your site

In the search engine, it is software and not people who scan and index the websites. The programmers behind the engines develop various tools and methods (algorithms) that allow the software to "understand" what each site is about, an “understanding” that enables them to present it in search results for users looking for relevant information

One of the first tools available to engine developers was "Keywords", which are simply a collection of terms and phrases that the site builder would place in a special behind-the-scenes place on the site (in the site code), and thus describe what the site is about. People who understood how search engines work realized that by changing the site code they can make search engines "prefer" this site over others for certain searches, and the SEO profession was born

A problem also began to arise for the engine operators; Not all site promoters have operated in a way that makes it easier for searchers to browse. There were also some (including many pornographic site owners) who took advantage of their knowledge of search engines for leading searchers to their sites by "planting" keywords that have nothing to do with the site's content, hoping to “catch” surfers looking for something else, hoping that if they were already here, they would stay and maybe even buy something or at least see some ads

The engine operators realized that if users searched for certain terms but got more and more irrelevant results, they would stop using the specific search engine and move on to another. This caused the engine owners to replace the method (algorithm) by which their software sorts websites, and added the requirement that it is not enough to specify a keyword in the code, it must also appear as part of the page content itself. Once again, the results have become more relevant, and publishers who have so far enjoyed a "life at the top" of search have suddenly been pushed down to the lower spots. The response from the site promoters was not long in coming, and it corresponds to the well-known story of Herschel the Australopian who was challenged to say "Mother is a donkey" as many times as possible in front of the entire family. They simply flooded the text on the site with the keywords they had chosen, and chaos ruled once again. And so, it happened that engineers who were looking for a design model found themselves led to a website of naked models. This situation could not continue, and a cat-and-mouse game ensued between the engine operators and the site promoters. These change the method, and the others try to find out what the change is and adapt to it to maintain a high position

War and Peace

The operators of the search engines soon discovered, as mentioned, the existence of website promoters, or SEOs, who found a livelihood in manipulating the search results. (There's a funny story that illustrates this perhaps most of all, and is that Google employees themselves have started receiving emails offering them to pay for bringing their website to first place in Google)

The attitude of the operators towards the SEOs was twofold; On the one hand, as mentioned, they identified the danger of harming the quality of service offered to users of search engines, with the appearance of "maneuverable" results, but on the other hand, there was an opportunity to collaborate with the site optimizers, by guiding them to match sites structure to search engine requirements. Thus turning them into sort of agents or representatives of the search engines, who will help in building more user-friendly and search engine friendly sites easier to index and to classify

Dealing with unwanted manipulations is done by periodically changing the search algorithm while keeping the cards close to the chest and keeping the components of the system a secret, as well as by punishing manipulation of search users by removing sites from search results altogether, or by hiding them on distant result pages

The site promoters, for their part, to whom engine methods were hidden from view, began working by way of trial and error, collaborations, patent tracking, conferencing, making adjustments and monitoring their impact on location, and even building special sites for experimentation

Of course, as confidentiality increased, so did the "experts" who identified themselves as “secret knowers” and who often caused publishers who hired them more harm than good as a result of being punished by search engines. When looking for an SEO company one should always be wary of those who say "I will make you first in Google", and prefer those who promise "I will do everything I can to adjust the structure of your site and market it online according to search engine requirements, and in most cases, it helps, at least until their algorithm changes and then I’ll Make adjustments "

Black hat White hat

Website promoters, as mentioned, do not always seek to "trick" the search engines. Most of them understand that in the long run, it is better for website owners to follow the engine operators' guidelines, thus achieving a target audience that is more relevant to the site, or customers that are looking for things relevant to what is sold on the site or to the business behind it. These searchers are less likely to give up and leave quickly. This working approach is called a "white hat". The second group usually operates in methods that focus on achieving quick results, while ignoring the danger of sanctions from Google and others

 

Even a search engine must eat

 The source of income for search engines is the advertisements that appear in them. And the sponsored results. Here again, comes a comparison to the days of Yellow Pages, where businesses were arranged alphabetically without discrimination, but there were those which were given a better chance of discovery by customers, in the form of boldly written listing or in a larger ad than the others. This option obviously costs the business owner more money

Similarly, large search engines now allow publishers to bring their site to the top of the results, for selected search terms, separated from the regular (organic) results. These instances of search results are called sponsored results, and the site owner pays every time a surfer clicks on one. The payment for the sponsored results, as well as the determination of the order in which this will appear in relation to each other, is determined by the auction method of the price per click between the various advertisers

 

Search Engine Sponsored Results Are A Private Case Of PPC-Pay Per Click Internet Marketing. But this is a story for another time