If you’re fairly fluent with SEO, you know that when you say “Search Engine Optimization” to clients, what they really hear is “Google Optimization”. As an SEO professional myself, I know there’s a lot more to SEO than organic Google rankings, but to deliver a message that a client wants to hear, I need to say the magic G-word. True, Google is the one most important search engine in the world when it comes to user usage. Here are a couple quick facts:
- Google’s search results have over and again proven to be the most accurate
- Google has more than a 50% market share of searches, eclipsing all other search engines put together
- Google owns the most comprehensive pay per click ad management platform
- Google continues to better itself by constantly incorporating new features like 3D maps, virtual business listings, etc.
- Google has been consistently rated as the best company to work for
As you can see, Google’s combination of top-notch services and well-rounded business model make it a very successful company. Additionally, Google’s searches are 100% free to use, ensuring those who are satisfied with search results return again and again. Of course, their branding has helped as well. It’s not often that you can get through a day in a corporate office without hearing, using, or seeing the word “Google”.
But how did it get to be such a household name?
Short answer: two guys in a garage with a computer. True story. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, both Stanford University graduates, started the search engine with a server out of a garage in California. They came up with an idea of how to make internet searches more relevant. Before Google become popular, an internet search for any term would likely yield the results that used the search term the most in their website, meaning if you were to search “search engine optimization vancouver” back in 1995, the top results could very well be pages that listed the words “search engine optimization vancouver” over and over again. This left opportunity for search engine spammers to have free for all’s at the expense of search users.
Google recognized this as an opportunity and created an algorithm that took into account many on-page factors like tag content, appropriate keyword density and navigation structure as well as incorporating off-page factors such as incoming links from relevant and related websites. This complex but logical algorithm has been updated frequently since the advent of the world’s most important search engine, and has resulted in a much less stressful process of retrieving information by millions of users each day.
So now that you know how Google works (roughly), its time to take your site and make sure that Google can see it for what it is.
Thanks for good article. Hope to see more soon.