Archive for November, 2009
History of search engines
In the early days of Internet development, its users were a privileged minority and the amount of available information was relatively small. Access was mainly restricted to employees of various universities and laboratories who used it to access scientific information. In those days, the problem of finding information on the Internet was not nearly as critical as it is now.
Site directories were one of the first methods used to facilitate access to information resources on the network. Links to these resources were grouped by topic. Yahoo was the first project of this kind opened in April 1994. As the number of sites in the Yahoo directory inexorably increased, the developers of Yahoo made the directory searchable. Of course, it was not a search engine in its true form because searching was limited to those resources who’s listings were put into the directory. It did not actively seek out resources and the concept of seo was yet to arrive.
How Do I Optimize for the Search Engines?
Search engine optimization begins even before designing your site. It starts by selecting a very narrow and focused topic for your site, and choosing the right domain name. You must then select the right keywords for each of your individual pages (keywords, or search terms, are what you expect search engine users will type in the search box to find a page like yours).
After that, site design can begin and, with it, web page optimization. Web page optimization involves optimizing page copy for your selected keywords and making your web page design friendly to search engines. This usually translates into using your keywords several times in your web page copy, and building a site that offers good navigation, a straightforward architecture, plenty of text, and easy access to all the site’s pages by following links from the most important pages.
The third step, the most difficult and time consuming, involves getting inbound links from quality sites related to your topic, with your keywords in the anchor text. It is virtually impossible to rank high in the most important search engines without a wide array of quality inbound links. Until now, reciprocal linking has been a common way to get inbound links. Search engines, though, tend to favor one-way links developed naturally (over time) coming from many different sources.
As far as submitting your website to the search engines is concerned, it is not necessary. Search engines find pages by following links on other pages. Therefore, by getting a few inbound links (we’ll explain how in our link building section) your site will be found and listed by the search engines.
