1997 -
1999 were the early years of search engine era. Internet
Marketing and more specifically search engine marketing
mainly consisted of submitting your sites to the search
engines. These "voices from the past" are still heard
today when this or that Search Engine Optimization company
and / or automatic submitting software will claim to
do search engine promotion for you by submitting your
site to hundreds and thousands engines and directories.
The search engines' indexing programs, called "robots"
or "spiders", looked through all of the HTML code of
a page and used some page ranking algorithms that they
kept in secret.
Those days were spammers' Heaven: it was rather easy
to get your site ranked high. You could just use your
keywords lots of times on the page, in the META tags,
HTML comments etc. and hide it from the human visitors
by making the text tiny or completely invisible with
the help of HTML tricks. The search engines didn't have
any sophisticated technique to recognize this kind of
spam, and such sites usually got high rankings very
easily. Today, you still can find some samples of this
primitive optimization (however you will have to give
it a hard try, because nowadays most of such Web projects
have been banned by the search engines for excessive
keyword usage). The only exception was Yahoo which
has always been indexed by humans who could in most
cases identify and ban spamming pages.
Gradually, search engines started recognizing spam and
applying corresponding penalties to Web pages using
spam methods. However, search engine optimizers were
always one step behind the search engines in finding
new ways of cheating the indexing algorithms. Hence
each search engine is committed to delivering only relevant
results to its visitors, the engines needed to take
control away from the spammers and auto-submitters.
Many began to try different ways of indexing.
The Rise of Google
If someone is asked today about the first search engine
to remember, the answer will be Google in 100% cases.
Google has started its way to be the King of search
engines in 2000 and in 2002 its right for this title
has been firmly established, with around 70% of searches
done on the Internet. While other search engines were
focusing on transforming to universal portals, Google
kept a simple and which has become its distinctive
feature fast interface that solely targeted
delivering relevant search results.
Google also developed advanced features such as indexing
and searching PDF (portable document format) and SWF
(shockwave flash) files. Additionally, Google's sophisticated
techniques to use the "off-the-page" factors made it
extremely spam-resistant. Google's dominance has become
steady in 2000 with Yahoo having switched from Inktomi
to Google as secondary search result provider. Now,
Yahoo uses the combination of Overture's and own search
software and index repository, thus being fully independent
on Google, however, without any slightest impact on
the dominance of the latter.
Global Consolidation
By 2001, the results of all major engines were produced
from a number of mixed / hybrid sources. Yahoo search
results combined Yahoo-directory listings, Overture
(PPC) results, and Google results. MSN provided results
from Overture (PPC), LookSmart , and Inktomi.
The years 2002 and 2003 brought major reshuffles among
search engines: in this period, Google purchased Blogger.com,
Yahoo bought Inktomi, and AltaVista and AllTheWeb became
a part of Overture. Also, there were many shifts caused
by emerging search engine partnerships. Further in this
course we will give you a complete and actual chart
of relationships between the contemporary search engines.
Search Engine Marketing Today
If you thought nowadays search engine marketing can
still be done by acquiring (and using) an auto-submission
software, drop this idea since now on. Search engine
marketing requires an integrated approach to improving
site content, quality and popularity. For a website
to reach its top potential, it must incorporate target
audience analysis, competitive analysis, cost per click
optimization, and - last but not least - copywriting
and copyediting. And, because things keep changing,
search engine marketers need to devote a good deal of
time staying on top of the SEO industry and its trends.
Today very few (and mostly inexperienced) optimizers
/ marketers would use spam methods to achieve high ranking.
In many cases, spamming and the so-called "black-hat"
SEO is recognized by automatic spiders, for these become
more and more intelligent. Even though we describe major
spamming methods in the end of this course, we do it
only in the sake of your awareness. We do NOT recommend
using them, as there's no guarantee at all they can
help, whereas it's very possible that your Web visibility
can be seriously damaged as a result.
The Future of Search Engine Marketing
Search engines have already developed into sophisticated
systems, and no doubt they will continue to enhance
their technical aspect, with improved capabilities to
index pages that are located deeply within the site
(many links away from the initial page). Also, their
abilities to handle dynamically generated pages (e.g.
shopping carts) can be expected to grow. Among other
perspective trends are advanced non-HTML content indexing
(such as PDF and graphics), improved ability to rapidly
integrate new content such as news using XML feeds or
other technology, organization of search results into
logical categories (sometimes referred to as clustering),
and other advanced features. For insights into the future
of search, you could visit Google Labs ( http://labs.google.com/). This is the beta
area where Google showcases some of its upcoming technologies.
However, the traditional "highest-bidder" approach makes
SEM feel more and more like traditional print advertising.
The Integrated Approach to SEM anticipates that in future,
best marketing efforts will aim to leverage the three
components: paid advertising and analytics, all-sided
site and content optimization and qualitative off-the-page
factors enhancement. That is why we prefer to call the
functions provided by Web CEO "Search Engine Marketing"
rather than "Search Engine Optimization". When all is
said and done, it is the traffic you get and the way
this traffic converts that matters not even
your site rank on a search engine. You can rank worse
than your competitor, yet the percentage of your visitors
that turn into buyers will be so high that you actually
outperform your competitor several times.
About
the Author
Carmen is the VP Client Relations of Ms. SEO Inc., a
Calgary based Search Engine Marketing
& Internet Marketing Company. Ms. Seo Inc. works
with their sister company Ms. Hype Inc., a Calgary Website Design Company,
and their parent company Cre8 Hype Solutions Inc., a Calgary
based Internet Marketing Company, to offer their
clients a powerful online presence. |
