I was waxing nostalgic over the Christmas and New Year break, thinking about my job and where I am now as an industrial search engine optimization specialist, versus five years ago, when I first started learning SEO and web design.  When I first began exploring SEO, Google Analytics was brand new and Google AdWords was only three years old!

Industrial search engine optimization wasn’t even around ten years ago and website design companies focusing solely on industrial clientele were only on the horizon. Now, I work in a highly specialized niche in online marketing and design for industrial clients.  I also learn more everyday about the ever-growing arena of social media and its potential for the industrial marketplace. 

Jill Whalen posted a thoughtful and detailed look at SEO in the last decade, with interesting tidbits like:

• In 2000, the engines and directories that we were talking about were: Lycos, Excite (almost dead by 2001), Snap (soon changed to NBCi), LookSmart, Go (formerly Infoseek), Hotbot, AltaVista and, yes, Google.
• In 2001, the meta keyword tag was already known to have little to no bearing on search engine rankings.
• In 2002, Google launched AdWords, and changed the face of online advertising and search marketing for the entire decade.
• In 2003, Yahoo purchased Inktomi, AltaVista and FAST, which was basically the end of all of them.
• In 2004, 301-redirects were becoming all the rage.
• In 2005, Google introduced Google Analytics, which changed the face of how to measure SEO success for the rest of the decade, and presumably beyond.
• In 2006, buying text links was huge business, but Google started to fight back.
• In 2007, Sphinn was born. And paid links got smacked down even more by Google, at least in terms of toolbar PageRank.
• In 2008, Jill continued to spread the word that rankings were a poor measure of success, while also showing how you should sometimes look past search engines.  Twitter also fired up!
• In 2009, the debate on meta keywords still raged while focus on keyword density finally was biting the dust.

So much has grown and changed in my profession and it continues to challenge me and keep me engaged in my ever-changing internet marketing career.  Here’s to a profitable and educational 2010!

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 10:03 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.