| In the beginning ? there were web pages. | | | | rankings. Link farms, link spamming, and |
| They were simple and straight forward and | | | | link purchasing, all emerged as methods to |
| just needed a way for potential visitors to | | | | unnaturally raise their rankings. And once |
| find them. | | | | again the search engines changed, developed, |
| | | | and evolved their algorithms to protect their |
| In the near beginning ? there were the simple | | | | natural search results. |
| search engines. These programs would index | | | | |
| the pages or URLs that were submitted to | | | | Not all was bad though. Overly aggressive |
| them. These search engines "spidered" or | | | | SEO firms were punished, if not banned, but |
| "crawled" the page and extracted various | | | | SEO companies that practiced ethical |
| information that they deemed necessary to | | | | techniques became an unexpected ally. The |
| determine the relevance of the page. | | | | thing is, a search engine's livelihood is |
| | | | determined by its ability to provide relevant |
| In the beginning after that ? webmasters | | | | results. So the search engine optimization |
| began to realize that there were certain | | | | firms who included relevant content as a |
| things they could do to manipulate the search | | | | major part of their strategies became very |
| engine results by faking their own relevancy. | | | | useful to the search engines. |
| | | | |
| The reason this was possible (and relatively | | | | In the present ? unethical practices still |
| simple) was because these early search | | | | exist. Everyone is looking for the "quick |
| engines based their results almost entirely | | | | fix" solution and keep turning to Black-Hat |
| on information that webmasters could easily | | | | practices despite the historical precedents. |
| control, change, and manipulate on their | | | | Everyone wants to believe they can outsmart |
| side. From this, the first forms of | | | | the search engines simply because they lack |
| White-Hat and Black-Hat SEO made their | | | | the patience or ability to do it the right |
| appearance (though they weren't called that | | | | way. |
| in the early days, of course). These early | | | | |
| techniques could be called spamming, or, if | | | | And things have begun to turn even nastier |
| you wanted to be a little more accurate, they | | | | than before. Some companies are no longer |
| could be called dirty rotten tricks that did | | | | content to simply cheat their own way up the |
| nothing but pollute your chances of ever | | | | ladder, but fell the need to try and pull |
| finding what you actually wanted. | | | | others down. This has come to be termed |
| | | | "Negative SEO" and includes practices like |
| Some of these tricks included stuffing the | | | | Google Bowling and false copyright |
| meta tags with keywords, and often unrelated | | | | complaints. |
| keywords (ever wonder why gambling or adult | | | | |
| sites would show up when you were looking for | | | | And once again, the search engines will adapt |
| cross stitch patterns?), or hiding keywords | | | | to compensate for this kind of behavior. |
| on the page or using questionable redirects. | | | | |
| | | | In the future ? will we see an end to this |
| Search engines began to evolve to combat | | | | behavior? Unlikely. Closing a door |
| these attempts at manipulation, some people | | | | somewhere always seems to open another |
| even developed algorithms to determine the | | | | somewhere else. And in the intensely |
| relevancy of a given site. | | | | competitive online world, everyone is always |
| | | | on the lookout for a way to get the leg up. |
| In the beginning ? of algorithmic search | | | | |
| engines ? things started to look a little | | | | Just remember: history has shown us that |
| better. Results were more relevant and it | | | | sometimes having the leg up just means that |
| was harder for webmasters to manipulate their | | | | its easier to knock you over. And, if you've |
| rankings. | | | | employed questionable SEO to get that leg up |
| | | | ? in other words, not maintaining your |
| But not impossible. | | | | balance ? the search engines won't hesitate |
| | | | to start pushing. |
| Slowly those same unethical SEOs began to | | | | |
| discover ways to artificially build their | | | | Hard. |