What is search engine optimization? This simply refers to tweaks made to the content, layout and HTML of web page to try and influence it’s ranking in the search results of one or more search engines. A whole industry of ‘experts’ has developed that offers this service at sometimes very high hourly rates.

The concept can be traced back to the mid’90s and the early search engines like Alta Vista. During those early days one could indeed easily get your website to rank high in search results simply by adding the ‘right’ title tag, description tag and keywords to the HTML of the website. Content did not play a major role.

Those days are long gone. Search engines quickly caught on that their search results were being manipulated by web designers and they changed the algorithm (formula) they used to determine a page’s ranking.

Theoretically the number of other websites linking to a particular website should be an indication of its importance. Inktomi is an example of one of the early search engines that used this principle to rank websites. Google soon after developed their own patented system whereby they didn’t only count incoming links to a website, but also rated those links in terms of various factors – so not all links were equal.

Web developers responded by setting up link pages, link farms and paid links sites where you could buy as many incoming links to your website as you want. Many of those still exist today. The debasement of the system continued when many blogs and forums allowed website owners to link back to their own websites when they posted comments on one of these sites.

Subsequently many blog sites and forums started introducing the nofollow tag to instruct search engine spiders not to let such a link count in favor of a particular website. This tag should not have a negative effect on the page linked to either – it should simply be neutral.

Google has since published an extensive manual where it explains to webmasters what they should be looking at if they want a good ranking in Google’s search results. Topics covered are guidelines for design and content, technical guidelines and quality guidelines that if followed will ensure a positive effect on your website’s ranking.

Search engine optimization has therefore moved beyond buying links and trying to manipulate a few HTML tags. The focus has shifted to quality and relevance, where it should have been from the start.

Tags: Online Advertising

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