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SEO - search engine optimization

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By Vangie Beal

SEO is short for search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (SERP) — including Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines.

Optimizing Visibility in Search Engines

It is common practice for Internet search users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search results page is essential for directing more traffic toward the site. The higher a website naturally ranks in organic results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user.

SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine. SEO is typically a set of "white hat" best practices that webmasters and Web content producers follow to help them achieve a better ranking in search engine results.

Optimizing Organic Search CTR

SEO is also about making your search engine result relevant to the user's search query so more people click the result when it is shown in search. In this process, snippets of text and meta data are optimized to ensure your snippet of information is appealing in the context of the search query to obtain a high CTR (click through rate) from search results.

SEO may also be called search engine optimizer when using automated tools to assist with the optimization process.

Recommended Reading: Webopedia's SEO Dictionary.