Who is the father of SEO?

[bijutoha]

Actually I heard about Bruce Clay, Gareth James aka and Leslie Rohde.

[happygeek]

http://goo.gl/CUAUD2

But, to be honest, it looks like you have already done a Google search and just pasted the names from it. If you already know about the three principle players with a claim to the title, why ask here?

[bijutoha]

In my query I saw them, Yes. But my view is.. it should be one from who is the legend or first on SEO.I need a clean answer at a glance that I have to say "He is the father of SEO".

[happygeek]

In that case the correct answer is Google is the father of SEO.

[ashleydaniel]

Bruce Clay is the Father of SEO, as he only coined the term.

[PixelatedKarma]

I would tend to agree because SEO as we know it very much revolves around Google itself. However on the other hand saying that Google is the father of SEO is also like saying the catholic church is the father of organized religion. Just because they currently hold the most power and generally dictate the drive for SEO does this really quantify Google as being the ruling power.

If we look back I'm sure we can see the founding fathers of SEO through a relatively easy Google search and by comparing the facts as presented (as mentioned previously), and by founding fathers I mean the people responsible for originally tinkering with their websites to try and increase their SERPs.

But SEO 15 years ago isn't really close to what SEO is today; nor will it be the same in another 15 years (especially if the internet of things takes foothold). Can you really imagine doing onpage optimizing for your website for a household bathroom mirror? I imagine that would be quite similar to optimizing a website for mobile/tablet search nowadays with vastly different criteria. Are we destined to now have our SEO dictated by Google? Or will Baidu eventually infringe enough on Google's space to make Baidu's algorithims the new SEO testiment? After all - even Rome fell once upon a time. Maybe with iphone6 adopting DuckduckGo - maybe we'll see a different shift in direction. After all users are becoming increasingly more aware of the requirements of privacy and a search engine like duckduckgo seems to be promising that moreso then Google. And maybe none of this will come to fruition; instead we will see people begin diversifying their web presence so that Google is used for local products and services while we go to duckduckgo for questions and answers and baidu for online shopping? Or maybe Google will wisen up to their competitors and begin making changes to stay in power for another decade or two.

Anyway that you look at it only time will tell what will happen in the future but to say for certainty that we should only be looking at the requirements of one company's/one individual's best practices would be a very narrow and short term success SEO success plan; especially when the internet is always changing.

[Dani]

I say GoTo.com ... They were the first ones to do pay-per-click and the whole concept of paying to increase your rank in search engines.

[danielpeterson]

Bruce Clay-based created the phrase 'SEO', but Gareth Wayne aka 'SEO Doctor' is the dad. Bruce Clay-based and the god dad is Barbara Rohde.

[Dani]

I change my answer. After spending over an hour a couple of weeks ago hanging out with Bruce investigating DaniWeb's traffic decrease, he made some suggestions that caused a near-instant improvement.

[davidkilimanja]

the father of seo has to be danny sullivan the founder of moz/search engine land. other contendors are matt cuttis for his many informative videos and articles on the topic as an insider

[deepam301192]

Parry Prabhu, The father of Seo. A man who discovered query optimization methods of google, bing, and yandex, etc.

[Dani]

SEO existed long before those search engines did. I was doing SEO back in 1996 on GoTo.com, Ask Jeeves, Etc. Long before Google was born.