By the late 1990s as the size of the Internet grew, search engines started appearing. There has always been a form of search engine, but up until now, they were aimed at techs and internet savvy people. Around this time, their use grew to include the "average Joe".
Search Engines received payment for their services through a new revenue steams like pay-per-click (PPC). By 2007, this medium was the main source of income for them.
SEO consultants appeared on the scene and helped businesses learn
about use the new advertising markets offered by search engines, and new agencies focusing upon marketing and advertising through search engines emerged.
about use the new advertising markets offered by search engines, and new agencies focusing upon marketing and advertising through search engines emerged.
The term "Search Engine Marketing" was supposedly proposed by Danny Sullivan in 2001 to cover the activities involved in SEO, managing paid listings at the search engines, submitting sites to directories, this gives you a rough idea of the maturity of the SEO world.
Initially the focus was on the pay-per-click market, but it soon became clear that the main focus was to become the organic market. Organic SEO is the attempt to get the best rank in the search engines through two main areas:
On Page Optimization is what can be physically done on the pages of a website to maximize its performance in the search engines for target keywords related to the on-page content.
Off Page Optimization is what can be done outside of a website to increase its ranking in the search engines for target keywords related to the page content and keywords in the form of direct-links.
By 2006, SEM was fastest growing advertising medium.
In 2008, North America spent $13.5 billion on search engine marketing. The largest players in the SEM world are Google AdWords, Yahoo! and Microsoft's adCenter.
Because the internet in general and search engines in particular are relatively new indrustries (only 15-20 years old) is based around a complex technology and knowledge of its workings is not easily available (off the shelf), a secondary "search marketing agency" market has evolved. Many people do not understand the workings of SEM and choose to rely on third party's to control their Internet advertising. Therefore, this page us designed to give you a brief run down of the SEM basics and a little bit of the background on the industry.
Source from : seo-myths.com