Suppose you are a company operating in a competitive industry, and your long-term goal is to increase profitability. In that case, you’ve most likely at least partially turned to search engine optimization to improve your presence in the SERPs. SEO has become the most popular technique employed by digital marketing companies. And its popularity is based on its efficiency. SEO, for lack of better terms, works, and it does so reliably, cheaply, and without deceiving users. The main goal of SEO is not to advertise your services but rather to improve them and make your target audience keener to interact organically with your website.

The impact of SEO on the Internet has been significant, and today, every single result you find when you perform a Google search has gone through a complex digital optimization process. Of course, the history of SEO hasn’t always been smooth sailing, and in the early 2000s, search engine optimization was harshly criticized for turning search results into a pool of Ad-sense spam. However, 20 years later, SEO is a mature and well-defined approach that has a largely positive impact on search engine results.

Without search engine optimization, you’d most likely see much more spam, advertisements, and clickbait. Is SEO perfect? No, but it’s the best method available to increase market share while simultaneously improving user experience. SEO is a complex technique that demands both technical knowledge and an understanding of market trends and user behavior to be effective. Therefore, getting to know clients and understanding their needs is a big reason why this digital marketing approach has reached the popularity it enjoys today. SEO does not seek to deceive clients or search engines; instead, it’s a tool to give people what they want. And in this respect, it’s a net positive.

What Changes Did SEO Bring?

The inception of search engine optimization is hard to pinpoint. For some, the birth of SEO coincides with the creation of the first website in 1991, while others say it all started with the founding of Yahoo in 1994. However, the consensus is that SEO, in a form that resembles what is encountered today, dates back to 1998 with the launch of Google. What has been the overall impact on the Internet? Firstly, SEO provides a way for websites to become more visible and minimize their spam practices. Before SEO, discovering sites on the available web directories was a chore, as there were no clear guidelines on how to engage users while also respecting spam practices.

Albeit slowly and with setbacks, search engine optimization changed things and improved web visibility through keyword research and the utilization of HTML metatags. SEO represented a shift in the industry because, suddenly, websites had to be optimized for both search engines and users. Although the strategies used were rudimentary at first, search engine optimization practices gradually improved the credibility of the sites that employed them and proved to be effective in keeping up with evolving trends.

Traffic generated by search engine optimization methods is organic and has a higher interactivity rate with the services or products offered by websites than other digital marketing methods. Plus, SEO is cost-effective and has become an essential aid for businesses, especially as the Internet slowly but surely, from 2007 until now, moved to a mobile-first indexing approach. The Internet will look different in twenty years, but one thing is sure: SEO will retain its relevancy, though it will probably involve tools that are in their infancy today.

How Did Google Impact the Evolution of SEO?

In many ways, SEO exists in its current form thanks to algorithms and guidelines created by Google. So, it’s not wrong to assume that the look of the modern Internet, and hence search results, is the creation of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, though people like Marc Andreessen, Tim Berners-Lee, and Bill Gates should also get a shout-out. Since its founding in 1997, Google’s algorithms have favored sites that post relevant content valuable to customers and address user intent without resorting to spammy practices. This focus on quality has evolved over the years, but the basic concept has remained the same.

The first algorithm to use the concept of link analysis in the ranking factor of websites was PageRank, a tongue-and-check nod to its creator, Larry Page. The underlying idea was simple and is still used today. Does your website benefit from backlinks coming from reputable websites active in your field? Then, your domain will benefit from a SERP push. Further algorithms, such as Panda, have targeted low-quality content, eliminated keyword stuffing practices, and incorporated metrics such as bounce rate into site ranking criteria. But from 1998 to the present, the basic concept has remained the same—quality above all else.

The way Google influences SEO strategies is just as evident today. The shift to a mobile-first indexing approach in 2019 represented a turnaround in SEO strategies, and nowadays, any blueprint of a search engine optimization approach starts with an audit of mobile functionality, while the actual optimization is mainly tailored towards smartphones. From the introduction of E-A-T concepts, which changed content strategies from the ground up, to the launch of Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor, Google has fundamentally influenced the world of SEO, and this trend is set to continue well into the future.

A Short Timeline of SEO Evolution:

Search engine optimization in its current form appeared, according to the consensus of market experts, with the founding of Google in 1998. However, proto-SEO methods have been present in the online space since the founding of the first online indexing tool, called Archie, in 1990. The World Wide Web was initially limited in scope, but things changed with the launch of Yahoo in 1994, which was the first ever wide-scale web directory. With Yahoo, proto-SEO elements, such as HTML meta-tags, began to be used for SEO purposes. Moreover, websites started to focus on their header tags, experiment with keyword density, and provide alt attributes to images.

The creation of the first widely used search engines, like AltaVista, popularized practices like keyword stuffing and the manipulation of metadata, methods that today would be cataloged as black-hat SEO and make your website get delisted. This was the early Internet, though, and things only started to change with the introduction of PageRank in 1998. PageRank was a more complex algorithm that rewarded websites that emphasized link quality. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it was a big step forward that laid the foundation for the SEO concepts used today.

The mid-2000s saw the rise of social media platforms, and with that, SEO techniques began to be tweaked to take advantage of personalized search results. Moreover, with the launch of the first iPhone in 2007, mobile searches started to gain an increased market share, reaching an all-time high of 63% in 2023. SEO today emphasizes, more than ever, a focus on quality over quantity, and the rise of AI makes the future exciting. However, no matter what, techniques such as link-building will remain as crucial to SEO strategies as they were to PageRank when it was first introduced in the late 90’s.

An Internet Without SEO is One Characterized by Chaos

SEO gets a lot of flak nowadays, as numerous studies found a decline in search results quality, attributing this to websites leveraging SEO for self-promotion. Algorithm changes, such as the introduction of BERT in 2019 and the Spam Update of 2023, have aimed to reduce the problem. But, the Internet nowadays is too big, and SEO is too much of an integral part of it for the issues to go away completely. Search engine optimization is not a perfect method. However, at its core, the basic concept is to optimize websites and improve the quality of services or products offered.

SEO is perhaps not always used as it ought to be. Nevertheless, its impact on the Internet has been positive and has led to the emergence of sites that today are recognized for their quality and influence on society. What would an Internet without SEO look like? Spammy. No SEO means limited discoverability, so most search engine results would be hogged by sites that promote their services through advertisements or paid promotions. This is a tactic that’s even used today. But without SEO, things would get out of control.

Without SEO, search results would be disorganized, users might encounter domains that do not match their requirements, and trust in websites would decrease dramatically. The visibility of businesses operating at an online level would drop, the quality of written content would be impaired as it would no longer be a ranking factor for SERP rankings, and the e-commerce industry would take a nose-dive. SEO, for better or worse, is an integral part of how we use the Internet, and while it’s not perfect, it is, to date, the best digital marketing method we’ve found to encourage the creation of quality content.