As the first search engines catalogued the early Web, web admins and content producers began optimizing websites for search engines in the mid-1990s. 

Initially, all webmasters had to do was submit the address of a page or URL to the various engines, which would then send a web crawler to crawl that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed. 

A search engine spider will download a page and save it on the search engine’s server. A second software retrieves information about the website, such as the words on it, where they are located, and any weight assigned to specific terms, as well as all links on the page that knowledge to your campaigns (paid and organic), website, social media properties, and more. All of this data is then stored in a scheduler for crawling at a later time. The benefit of a high ranking and exposure in search engine results were recognized by website owners, offering an opportunity for both white hat and black hat SEO practitioners. According to industry expert Danny Sullivan, the term “search engine optimization” first appeared in 1997. Bruce Clay, according to Sullivan, was one of the first to popularise the term. Early versions of search algorithms relied on information provided by webmasters, such as the keyword meta tag or index files in engines such as ALIWEB. Meta tags serve as a pointer to the content of each page. However, using metadata to index pages was less than reliable because the webmaster’s selection of keywords in the meta tag could potentially be an inaccurate depiction of the site’s actual content. Flawed data in meta tags, such as those that were not correct, full, or falsely attributed, increased the possibility of misclassified pages in irrelevant searches. Web content providers also altered some attributes within a page’s HTML source to rank well in search engines. By 1997, search engine designers realized that web admins were working hard to rank high in their search engines. Some webmasters were even manipulating their search engine rankings by cramming pages with irrelevant or excessive keywords. Earlier search engines, such as Altavista and Infoseek, modified their algorithms to prevent web admins from influencing ranks. 

Early search engines were prone to abuse and ranking manipulation since they relied significantly on characteristics such as keyword density, which were entirely within the control of a website. Search engines had to adjust to ensure that their results pages displayed the most relevant search results, rather than unrelated pages filled with multiple keywords by unethical webmasters, to deliver better results to their users. Search engines responded by building more complicated ranking algorithms that considered other characteristics that web admins found more challenging to control. Companies that use overly aggressive approaches risk having their clients’ websites removed from search results. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2005 on a company called Traffic Power that purportedly used high-risk practices while failing to disclose those dangers to its clients. According to Wired magazine, the same corporation sued blogger and SEO Aaron Wall for blogging about the restriction. Google’s Matt Cutts later acknowledged that H had banned traffic Power and sure of its clients. Some search engines have also extended to the SEO business, serving as sponsors and speakers at SEO conferences, webchats, and seminars. The major search engines offer information and suggestions to assist with website optimization. Google has a Sitemaps software that helps web admins determine if Google has issues indexing their website and provides data on Google traffic to the domain. Bing Webmaster Tools allows webmasters to upload a sitemap and web feeds, assess the “crawl rate”, and track the index status of web pages. 

Google was rumoured to develop and push mobile search as a significant feature in future products in 2015. As a result, several companies began to change their Internet marketing techniques.