Every so often, I hear someone mention that they’ve been “doing SEO since the mid-1990s, before it was even called SEO.”
That’s a bold statement — but let’s look at what was really happening back then. The internet was brand new. Search engines were in their infancy.
Most websites were plain text pages, and people were still figuring out what this new digital world could do.
“SEO,” as we know it today, didn’t exist. It was trial, error, and a whole lot of guesswork.
The Wild West Years of the Internet
In the mid-1990s, search engines like Yahoo, WebCrawler, and AltaVista were just starting to organize information.
WebCrawler, launched in 1994, was the first search engine to index every word on a web page — and that one innovation shaped how search engines operate today. It was groundbreaking at the time, but far from what we’d call search engine optimization.
Back then, optimization was mostly guesswork. Early “SEO” meant cramming keywords into every corner of a page, even if they had nothing to do with the business.
A pizza shop might load its meta tags with words like vacation, fitness, or celebrity gossip just to appear in unrelated searches. It worked — briefly.
People also resubmitted the same site to online directories again and again, hoping repetition meant importance.
When backlinks started influencing rankings, another tactic appeared — link farms, collections of random websites linking to each other to fake authority.
None of it was strategic. None of it was sustainable. But it was the messy beginning of what would eventually become real search engine optimization.
When SEO Finally Became SEO
Then came Google.
When Google introduced PageRank in 1998, everything changed. Instead of counting keywords, Google started measuring quality and trust. It looked at context, credibility, and meaningful content.
Suddenly, all those old tricks stopped working. Keyword stuffing, fake links, and directory spam didn’t just fail — they got sites penalized.
By the early 2000s, Google began rolling out major algorithm updates like Florida (2003) and Penguin (2012) that cracked down on manipulative practices.
Those updates forced marketers to stop gaming the system and start focusing on genuine quality — relevant content, solid site architecture, and good user experience.
SEO had matured.
Today’s SEO: Strategy, Not Shortcuts
Modern SEO looks nothing like it did in the 1990s.
It’s about earning trust through helpful, evergreen content, building sites with solid structure, and focusing on clear communication. It’s about local visibility done right — not mass spam. It’s about transparency, education, and credibility instead of tricks and loopholes.
Experienced, genuine SEO professionals spend more time improving the user experience and guiding their clients than trying to outsmart algorithms — because those days are long gone.
Experience Matters — But Only If It’s Current
Experience is valuable, but only when it evolves. Knowing what worked in 1998 doesn’t mean much if you’re not applying modern best practices today.
True expertise means staying current, adapting with every algorithm change, and helping clients make informed, ethical choices that lead to long-term results.
Because at the end of the day, SEO isn’t about what you used to do. It’s about what you’re doing right now to build visibility, credibility, and trust.
We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby
SEO has come a long way from the days of keyword stuffing, link farms, and directory games.
It’s now a living, evolving discipline built on education, transparency, and real value. Professionals who’ve grown with it — not just stayed in it — are the ones delivering results that stand the test of time.
So the next time someone tells you they’ve been “doing SEO since the mid-1990s,” you owe it to yourself to know better.
There was no such thing back then — and even ten years later, SEO was only in its infancy.
The SEO we know and work with today is smarter, more complex, and far more effective — because it’s evolved right along with the web itself.