When the first search engines began cataloging the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s, obtaining a high rank on search engine results pages (SERPs) was not particularly difficult or secretive. It was the webmasters who submitted URLs to the engines and communicated a page’s relevancy to a keyword search through keyword meta tags in the HTML code. Early engines, like AltaVista, struggled with providing relevant search results because webmasters, who were paid on a cost per impression bases at the time, wrote inaccurate meta tags using high search volume keywords in order to increase visits to their website. It was Google who finally answered the call for a more complex ranking algorithm that would greatly improve the relevancy of SERPs. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google, invented the concept of PageRank, an algorithm which helps rank web pages based on the probability that a random person surfing the Internet will find a given page. The PageRank algorithm assigns a numerical value to each web page by analyzing the quantity and quality of the pages that link back to a given page. Known as a backlink, each link represents a vote for the page it links to by the page on which the link appears. The significance of each vote depends on how relevant the page giving the link is to the page receiving the link, as well as the PageRank of the linking page.
Along with the changing search engines continually trying to provide more relevant search results to the user, the entire Web has been evolving to meet the needs of the massive Internet population. In conjunction with the growth of the Internet and the popularity of search, a unique profession known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was born. SEO tactics and skills have evolved alongside the changing Internet, but such changes have never been as significant as the most recent. We have entered into a second phase of the Internet, and as a result SEO is taking on a new face. This second generation of the Internet, often referred to as Web 2.0, has moved away from the old model, based on static websites, clicks, and impressions, and burst onto a cyber playing field built around communities, participation and open cooperation towards better products and services. An unprecedented level of interaction between consumers, businesses, and interest groups exists in this new Web. Due to the existence of a new social presence, vehicles for driving organic traffic to one’s website have expanded far beyond the major search engines. While obtaining high rankings on the major search engines is still an SEO’s main objective, the means by which this positioning is achieved requires a much broader capacity for creativity than ever before. Many of these new tactics also provide additional avenues of incoming traffic, which has significantly expanded the big picture view of the SEO professional. In order to grasp the fundamental principles of the creativity and perspective now required of SEO, it is important to get a better understanding of the new Web 2.0 environment.
