SEO – The Past, Present & Future

The field of search engine optimization has been witnessing rapid changes and the same trend will continue in the future also. So, both webmasters and SEO service providers have to be on their toes always to cope with these changes. We’ll take a look at the evolution search engine optimization over the years and its future ahead.

The Past

During the beginning of search engine optimization in the late 1990s, more attention was given to optimizing the on-page factors of websites rather than building link popularity through off-page optimization. We’ll discuss both on-page and off-page optimization in detail later in this article. The reason behind lack of efforts on link popularity is webmasters and Internet marketers were exchanging links with other related websites freely. That was enough to bring traffic to their websites. Banner ads were actually popular during this period.

During the early 2000’s, the popularity of link building gained momentum. You can say, this was the beginning of the era when link popularity outclassed on-page activities. Numerous websites concentrated on building more and more links from related websites and creating sub-domains. On the other hand, it was also the era of rising SEO companies who adopted unprincipled and unfair strategies and techniques to achieve link popularity.

During the middle period of 2000’s, more than 75 percent of all SEO activities were focused on link popularity. This period also witnessed the rise of social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon, Orkut, etc. that revolutionized the process of interlinking. Search engine optimization turned so prominent that it did away with the need of listing on Yellow Pages for countless businesses around the world. This period was also important for Google as it established itself as the number one search engine.

The Present

Talking about the present scenario, the concept of SEO is in full swing and has become the paramount choice of online businesses to promote their products or services. As stated by Internet Retailer Magazine, the expenditure on search engine optimization worldwide is expected to rise by a staggering 43% this year.

As far as link popularity is concerned, there is no sign of dying away as more than 80 percent of all activities are currently revolved around link building. Such is the craze of link popularity that links have got the status of commodity and are often traded over the Internet by link brokers. The PageRank toolbar offered by Google regarding the importance of a web page has lost some of its sheen for ranking intentions, but it continues to exist for viewing by web surfers only.

As the number of websites is presently numbered in millions, the competition for optimizing the majority of 2-word phrases is getting tougher. The keywords that had mere 50,000 search results some 6 years back have now more than 300,000 search results, thereby making the task of top 10 ranking all the more difficult. This implies that only the most innovative SEO techniques employed by the most competent SEO firms can get you the top ranks for your targeted keywords. So, guaranteed optimization services are not a cakewalk anymore. The advice for webmasters is to choose a service provider cautiously after planning their expenses meticulously.

The Future

In the future, search engines will start to present search results that can be controlled locally. Though noteworthy progress has already been made in this regard by Google, it would be more prevalent in the days to come. Browser-specific results will also be witnessed. Link building will continue its growing streak, but the evaluation of links will get trickier with the advent of more complicated search engine algorithms and link determination factors. On-page optimization will get back to the popularity chart with mounting emphasis on cutting down the website size. Video search will grow in stature with the potential to become the most preferred choice of online marketing.

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