SEO
- Also known as
- Search Engine Optimisation
- Pronounced
- ess-ee-oh (some say it as a word, "see-oh")
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is the collective name for everything done to a site to get it as high as possible in the results when somebody searches on Google, Bing or anywhere else.
The other way people describe SEO, besides the literal reading of the abbreviation, is “search engine promotion”. Promotion here means the gradual arrival of the two outcomes that matter:
- the site climbs higher in the results on Google and other search engines;
- the number of search terms that will find the site at all goes up.
SEO is a composite discipline. It sits where programming, HTML markup, writing, public relations and statistical analysis meet — because modern search engines, Google above all, weigh a very large number of different signals when deciding which results suit a given person best.