Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic“) search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. SEO can be approached in many ways, but the latest trend is Performance Based SEO.
As a strategy for increasing a site’s relevance, SEO considers how search algorithms work and what people search for. SEO efforts may involve a site’s coding, presentation, and structure, as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site along with increasing presence of the site on the internet. Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that tend to harm search engine user experience. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques and may remove them from their indices.
The initialism “SEO” can also refer to “search engine optimizers”, terms adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO process in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone process or as a part of a broader internet marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term “search engine friendly” may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems, URLs, and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.
SEO™ SERVICE DEFINITION
SEO® as a service definition was first brought to attention by the United States Patent and Trademark Organization in application number 77171330. It was approved for publication and is officially defined as; “Marketing services in the field of computers in the nature of providing marketing services for the benefit of others by compiling advertising campaigns, promotional services, and consulting for customers.”
HISTORY
Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was submit a page, or URL, to the various engines which would send a spider to “crawl” that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed.[1] The process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine’s own server, where a second program, known as an indexer, extracts various information about the page, such as the words it contains and where these are located, as well as any weight for specific words and all links the page contains, which are then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date.
Site owners started to recognize the value of having their sites highly ranked and visible in search engine results.They also recognized that the higher their site ranking the more people would click on the website. According to industry analyst Danny Sullivan, the earliest known use of the phrase search engine optimization as a service was a spam message posted on Usenet on July 26, 1997.[2]
