Copyright 2017 Search Engine Journal. Published by Alpha Brand Media All Rights Reserved. MAKING BUSINESSES VISIBLE Consumer tracking information External link metrics Combine data from your web Uploading backlink data to a crawl analytics. Adding web analytics will also identify non-indexable, redi- data to a crawl will provide you recting, disallowed & broken pages with a detailed gap analysis and being linked to. Do this by uploading enable you to find URLs which backlinks from popular backlinks have generated traffic but A checker tools to track performance of AT aren’t linked to – also known as S D BA the most link to content on your site. C CK orphans. TI L LY IN A K N D A A T B A E W O R G A A T N A I D C E S IL Search Analytics E F Crawler requests A G R O DeepCrawl’s Advanced Google CH L Integrate summary data from any D Search Console Integration ATA log file analyser tool into your allows you to connect technical crawl. Integrating log file data site performance insights with enables you to discover the pages organic search information on your site that are receiving from Google Search Console’s attention from search engine bots Search Analytics report. as well as the frequency of these requests. Monitor site health Improve your UX Migrate your site Support mobile first Unravel your site architecture Store historic data Internationalization Complete competition Analysis [email protected] +44 (0) 207 947 9617 +1 929 294 9420 @deepcrawl Free trail at: https://www.deepcrawl.com/free-trial Table of Contents 9 Chapter 1: 20 Years of SEO: A Brief History of Search Engine Optimization 27 Chapter 2: What Is Search Engine Optimization 69 Chapter 3: SEO Glossary: 200+ Terms & Definitions You Need to Know 119 Chapter 4: Why Search – and SEO – Is Important 126 Chapter 5: 60+ Mind-Blowing Stats About Search Engine Optimization 135 Chapter 6: Meet the Search Engines 149 Chapter 7: How People Search: Classifying & Understanding User Intent 162 Chapter 8: 20+ Free Tools to Help You Find What People Search For 180 Chapter 9: Why Links Are Important for SEO 193 Chapter 10: Why Keywords Are Perpetually Important for SEO 217 Chapter 11: Why Content Is Important for SEO 235 Chapter 12: 9 Essential Types of Web Pages Every SEO Need to Be Familiar With 249 Chapter 13: How Long SEO Takes 259 Chapter 14: 15 SEO Myths That Just Won’t Die 276 Chapter 15: The 25 Best Blogs & Publications for Learning SEO 286 Chapter 16: The Best SEO Conferences to Attend 288 Chapter 17: 140 of Today’s Top SEO Experts to Follow 315 Chapter 18: 11 Big SEO Challenges You’ll Face in Your Career CHAPTER 1 20 Years of SEO: A Brief History of Search Engine Optimization WRITTEN BY LOREN BAKER Search engine optimization (SEO) very much revolves around Google today. However, the practice we now know as SEO actually pre-dates the world’s most popular search engine co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Although it could be argued that SEO and all things search engine marketing began with the launch of the first website published in 1991, or perhaps when the first web search engine launched, the story of SEO “officially” begins a bit later, around 1997. According to Bob Heyman, author of “Digital Engagement,” we can thank none other than the manager of rock band Jefferson Starship for helping give birth to a new field that we would grow to know as “search engine optimization.” You see, he was quite upset that the official Jefferson Starship website was ranking on Page 4 of some search engine at the time, rather than in Position 1 on Page 1. Granted, we may never know if this tale is more revisionist history or 100 percent fact, all signs definitely point to the term SEO originating around 1997. Do a little more hunting around and you’ll see John Audette of Multimedia Marketing Group was using the term as early as February 15, 1997. Ranking high on search engines in 1997 was still a pretty new concept. It was also very directory driven. Before DMOZ fueled the original Google classification, LookSmart was powered by Zeal, Go.com was its own directory, and the Yahoo Directory was a major player in Yahoo Search. If you’re unfamiliar with DMOZ, the Mozilla Open Directory Project (remember, Mozilla was a company and Moz was a brand well before SEOMoz), it was basically a Yellow Pages for websites. Which is what Yahoo was originally founded upon, the ability to find the best websites out there as approved by editors. I started doing SEO in 1998, as a need for our clients who have built cool sites but were getting little traffic. Little did I know, it would become a lifestyle. Then again, the World Wide Web was still a pretty new concept at the time to most people. Today? Everybody wants to rule the search engine results pages (SERPs). Search Engine Optimization vs. Search Engine Marketing Before Search Engine Optimization became the official name, other terms were used as well. For example: • Search engine placement • Search engine positioning • Search engine ranking • Search engine registration • Search engine submission • Website promotion But no discussion would be complete without mentioning another term: Search Engine Marketing. At one point in 2001, one prominent industry writer suggested search engine marketing as a successor to search engine optimization. Obviously, it didn’t happen. Prepare yourself now: you’re going to see many false claims (e.g., “SEO is dead” “the new SEO”) and attempts at rebranding SEO (“Search Experience Optimization”). While SEO as a term isn’t perfect – after all, we aren’t optimizing search engines, we’re optimizing our web presence – it has remained the preferred term of our industry for 20 years now and likely will be for the foreseeable future. As for Search Engine Marketing – it is still used but is now more associ- ated with paid search. The two terms co-exist peacefully today. A Timeline of Search Engine History Search engines have changed the way we find information, conduct research, shop for products and services, entertain ourselves, and con- nect with others. Behind almost every online destination – whether it’s a website, blog, social network, or app – is a search engine. Search engines have be- come the connecting force and directional guide to everyday life. But how did this all start? We’ve put together a timeline of notable milestones from the history of search engines and search engine optimization to understand the roots of this technology, which has become such an important part of our world. Dawn of SEO: “The Wild West” Era In the last decade of the 1900s, the search engine landscape was highly competitive. You had your choice of search engines – both human-powered directories and crawler-based listings – including the likes of AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, and Yahoo. In the beginning, the only way to perform any kind of SEO, was through on-page activities. This included making sure the content was good and relevant, there was enough text, your HTML tags were accurate, and that you had internal and external links, among other factors. If you wanted to rank well in this era, the trick was pretty much just repeating your keywords enough times throughout your webpages and meta tags. Want to outrank a page that uses a keyword 100 times? Then you’d use the keyword 200 times! Today, we call this practice spamming. Here are some highlights: • 1994: Yahoo was created by Stanford University students Jerry Wang and David Filo in a campus trailer. Yahoo was originally an Internet bookmark list and directory of interesting sites. Webmasters had to manually submit their page to the Yahoo directory for indexing so that it would be there for Yahoo to find when someone performed a search. AltaVista, Excite, and Lycos also launched. • 1996: Page and Brin, two Stanford University students, built and tested Backrub, a new search engine that ranked sites based on inbound link relevancy and popularity. Backrub would ultimately become Google. HotBot, powered by Inktomi, also launched. • 1997: Following on the success of A Webmaster’s Guide to Search Engines, Danny Sullivan launched Search Engine Watch, a website dedicated to providing news about the search industry, tips on searching the web, and information about how to rank websites better. (Ten years later, after leaving SEW, Sullivan founded another popular search publication, Search Engine Land.) Ask Jeeves also debuted and Google.com was registered. • 1998: Goto.com launched with sponsored links and paid search. Advertisers bid on Goto.com to rank above organic search results, which were powered by Inktomi. Goto.com • was ultimately acquired by Yahoo. DMOZ (the Open Directory Project) became the most sought-after place for SEO practitioners to get their pages listed. MSN entered into search with MSN Search, initially powered by Inktomi. • 1999: The first-ever all search marketing conference, Search Engine Strategies (SES), took place. You can read a retrospective on that event by Sullivan here. (The SES conference series continued running under various monikers and parent companies until shutting down in 2016.) The Google Revolution In 2000, Yahoo pulled off the worst strategic move in the history of search and partnered with Google and let Google power their organic results instead of Inktomi. Beforehand Google was a little-known search engine. Hardly known! The end result: every Yahoo search result said “Powered by Google” and they ended up introducing their largest competitor to the world and Google became a household name.