Search Engine Optimisation

The Origins of Search Engine Optimisation   

 

We live in the technological age, and one of the main uses these computers are put to is to use and to search the internet. Initially the increasing use of the internet was recognised as a way to make large amounts of money relatively quickly and easily.

 However when the dot com bubble burst around the turn of the twenty first century, many of the companies who had made their name and their millions (or billions) online went into liquidation or were forced to file for bankruptcy. Although this is not the case for all companies (notable exceptions include Amazon.com), it was without a doubt one of the most serious shake ups that the global stock market had yet seen.

 Many employees of these companies now found themselves in a job market flooded with people with the same skill sets, making competition for new starts fierce, and there was a noticeable reduction in the number of students starting information technology degrees.

However there is undoubtedly still money to be made on the internet. With the increasing usage of the internet, there has of course been a drastic rise in the number of websites. We are at the stage now where there are currently over three hundred and forty five million individual websites operating worldwide. For a business this can pose serious issues. Primary among these is how to get your website noticed from the countless thousands of others that offer sites offering similar services. The consumer also has the task of locating the site most suitable for their requirements.

To help them, consumers regularly use internet search engines to locate exactly what they are looking for. Most of these online search engines list search results in priority order according to their relevance to the exact wording of the consumer’s search. Search Engine Optimisation - or SEO for short - is a process by which internet companies seek to improve the visibility of their website in the search results pages on search engines such as Google. The typical aim is to have the company’s website listed as close to the top of the linear list of results as possible, the idea being that the user is more likely to follow that link.

This optimisation of how a website is positioned in a search engines list of results is dependent on a variety of think, such as how the individual search engine actually works or the keywords a customer is likely to type. To fully optimise the search engine as a marketing tool take a lot of time, effort and specialist knowledge. Therefore many companies subcontract this work to an SEO agency, which specialise in this field.

 by Levi Mckie