SEO Before Search Engines Existed

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

Believe it or not there was a time when search engines didn’t exist, at least, not in their present format and back then, there was little in the way of search engine optimization. We still received visitors, and some sites even managed to generate sales!

So how did we get visitors to our sites when search engines couldn’t help and search engine optimization was totally unknown?

Believe it or not, it was simple old fashioned marketing. Go through any of the computer magazines for the mid 1990′s and you will see page after page of ads. Visit one of those websites and what did you find, ads to other related sites.

If it wasn’t advertising, it was through forum’s and bulletin boards. We hardly hear of bulletin boards anymore. Forums still exist and are widely used still – but not quite in the same way.

Call me old fashioned – however I still believe a website can survive without any search engine optimization – so long as it is prepared to go down the tough road of simple advertising.