SEO. Or rather S.E.O. – this is how it should be written, because it is an acronym, after all. It stands for Search Engine Optimization.
The term might be a bit mysterious and complex-sounding to the at first blush. The truth is, it CAN be complex – there’s a lot to SEO – but it can also be described pretty simply.
SEO is the cumulative actions of a website owner to make the site rank better for certain keyword search terms. That is, if someone types “buy widgets” into Google, a bunch of different sites will be listed. Google’s job is to determine which sites are the most valuable to users and uses a complex algorithm to determine this. SEO is the process of tweaking things so that your site comes up high in the search results for your desired term(s).
Exactly what sorts of things are done to improve SEO won’t be covered in this post, or any one blog post. Many books have been written on the subject; many websites post about SEO daily. The volume of information on the subject is extremely massive and will continue to grow.
This is because Google, Bing, and the other search engines continually change their algorithms to get better search results. This is in their best interest. The more relevant search results Google or Bing can give their users, the quicker they’ll find whatever it is they’re looking for… and the less likely they’ll switch to a different website to look.
Don’t think that because Google is so dominant that they can’t be usurped. They know how quickly things on the Internet can change and they’re researching every day to make their search results better, to make their site and other products stickier. So they’re constantly adapting to changes in the world of the web. SEOs (people who do SEO professionally) are always having to learn new techniques. That’s part of the challenge and part of the fun.
