What is SEO Anyway?

Posted on 05. Jul, 2011

SEO does not stand for Social Executive Office. While that sounds pretty cool and someday there may be an executive position for someone like that, it’s not what SEO really stands for.

What is SEO?

SEO is Search Engine Optimization.
SEO is not some fad marketing tactic.
SEO is not some dark voodoo science.
SEO is not something you do just once.
SEO is not free, even though it gets you free traffic.
SEO is not going away.

Surprisingly, I hear people ask, “What is SEO?” quite often. Whenever I am not living, eating, and breathing SEO, I am in the community networking and participating in a lot of referral marketing. So, when someone asks me what SEO stands for, my suppressed reaction is still the same.

When someone asks this question; what is SEO, it’s almost like someone is asking me what their name is. What do you mean you don’t know your own name? How do you get through the day? Deep breathe in, hold for 5 seconds, and exhale slowly. This is just another gentle reminder that the Internet and technologies available to us as marketers is still in its infancy.

SEO or search engine optimization allows people to actually find what they are looking for when they go to the Internet in search of information. It wasn’t called the information super highway for nothing. When people go online and search for information they usually go to one of the bigger search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo.

The only way these big engines can know how to deliver the information you are looking for is to have their computer programs decipher code and words of a gazillion web pages available to them.

Let’s say your business is a good resource for information someone is seeking. Well, it would be in your best interest to make sure your web pages for your business are optimized to be found online to solve the problems your next customer is seeking a solution to.

When you a have a good website that captures natural search traffic to deliver new customers to your door, you are probably not asking what is SEO. You are probably wondering how you can use it more effectively to market your business while tapping into this seemingly endless supply of new business available in search.

SEO consultants know that effective SEO is more than Meta tags, descriptions, and directory submissions. It’s more than IT, Google Places, and just getting found. Effective SEO is about being found in more places, more often, to provide the solutions to your ideal customers and clients easily. When you are found in all these places on the Internet for things your customer is searching for, you are then in a position to Be the Obvious Choice online for what you do.