I\'m stealing this straight from Wikipedia "Seo, sometimes romanized Suh or So, is a common Korean family name". Yeah, that\'s not the SEO we\'re discussing here. There are a few definitions but this is my favorite


"This is a process to improve a website to promote key messages and making it more relevant to people surfing the internet."


In my opinion, that is the most accurate, however, not perfect, to me at least. My definition would be –


"SEO is currently a 2 step process that involves changing web code and content to help the search engine understand what your site\'s information is useful for and through other websites linking to you to show your information is popular, relevant and useful." THAT\'S IT. NOTHING MORE. NOTHING LESS!


Notice I did not say "by building links". Also, I did not mention "traffic" or "visitors". SEO, by itself is a process used to show the search engine that your website and its content is useful and should be placed in their results/index. We all know the objective is to gain more visitors thus gaining more business but I point this out to help business owners understand that SEO Companies are responsible for helping you make your business more relevant through the SEO process, not to control demand for your product, not to control how many people are searching for your product and not to control how many people land on your website. There is a direct correlation obviously between how good someone is at SEO (big picture) and how many people end up visiting your site, t


It\'s my opinion that Google does not want you building links yourself by way of payment or barter. Google wants others to link to you because they found your information relevant, regardless of page rank (green bar on the Google toolbar). Deliberate link building, I BELIEVE, is found to be "manipulative" by Google. They want it to happen "naturally" or "organically" I believe that is why it is called what it is called, "ORGANIC/NATURAL OPTIMIZATION". By putting any effort into the process or directly manipulating where you link from (i.e buying the links), you are not REALLY organically/naturally the most RELEVANT or USEFUL website because you had a hand in directly manipulating links in an EFFORT to gain better rankings within the results.


Google\'s job is to present RELEVANT, USEFUL websites with RELEVANT, USEFUL content to the person searching on the engine. You\'re job is to make your site RELEVANT and USEFUL by changing code/content on your website and by making sure others link to you because your website is RELEVANT and USEFUL. Google, the machine, is a robot, not a human. It uses a variety (thousands in theory) of elements of your website and the links that point to your website to understand how relevant or useful your website and content is relative to any other website it could present during a search query.


And I digress. The point is, all SEO really is, changing code on your website and having links point to your website. I\'m sure most would argue there are millions of ideas that could be presented during both of those stages but my goal is to educate on a high level, not get into changing alt tags, using deep links, etc… because I believe you could have a completely BLANK page and still rank high on Google. That\'s because I believe Google places more weight and emphasis on LINKS that point to your website than the stuff/code on your website. Let\'s not deviate and start discussing types of links, link farms, porn links, etc because my goal is not to educate on what links may be, in THEORY bad or good. If you understand Google\'s job, there should be no question as to who or how to change your website code or build links however you deem fit.


"Google\'s job is to present RELEVANT, USEFUL websites with RELEVANT, USEFUL content to the person searching on the engine. You\'re job is to make your site RELEVANT and USEFUL by changing code/content on your website and by making sure others link to you because your website is RELEVANT and USEFUL."