Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

In 1996, when GoLive was introduced, the phrase "search engine optimization" didn't even exhist.
Larry Page had just started working on his project of "downloading the web" and organizing it with his first prototype of a search engine, BackRub.

Search engines at the time weren't popular, and ranking algorythms weren't considered that crucial by the leading search engine at the time, AltaVista. Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword meta tag and on-page content. Links and backlinks were not considered.

According to Danny Sullivan, the phrase "search engine optimization" didn't came into use until 1997 when Multimedia Marketing Group by John Audette used the term on its website. By 1997, search engines had started to recognize that webmasters were making concious efforts to rank higher in the search result pages (SERPs), and that some webmasters were stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords in order to manipulate the ranking.