What is Search Engine Optimization or SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (popularly known as SEO) is the practice of optimizing a website or blog to maximize or increase the traffic from different search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Altavista etc… This SEO traffic is free as it comes from search engines naturally by optimizing the webpages unlike other forms of search engine marketing (popularly known SEM and Pay per click) which deals with paid advertisements in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). The basic theory of website SE Optimization is that the earlier (or higher) a website appears in the SERPs, the more the visits it gets from the search engine. SEO will aim at different types of search, which include local search, video search, image search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a site web presence.

SEO is nothing but considering how SE's work and what people search for. Optimizing a website mainly requires editing its content using HTML and affiliated coding to gain both its relevance to particular keywords and also to take away roadblocks to the indexing activities of search engines.

The acronym “SEO” can refer to “search engine optimizers,” an industry adopted term by consultants who execute optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform in-house SEO services. SE optimizers may provide SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a more liberal marketing campaign. Since efficient SEO may call for modifications to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics perhaps merged into web site development and design. The term “search engine friendly” can used to describe web site designs, content management systems(CMS), images, menus, videos, shopping carts, and other elements that have been optimized for the intent of search engine exposure.

There is also another class of technique, called black hat SEO or spamdexing which uses techniques like stuffing keywords, link farms and article spinning methods that degrade both the user-experience of SEs and the relevance of search results. Search engines look in to the websites that engage black hat SEO techniques in order to slay them from their indexes.