I originally submitted this post to the SEOmoz, YOUmoz blog. Needless to say, it was rejected. I don’t blame them; it’s far to generic. They are mostly interested in actionable content, which this is not. Nonetheless, I think it’s worth sharing here.
The Break Down
A boring-ass, but hopefully enlightening and unique, definition:
SEO is the practice of adjusting a website, and its pages, so that they are most likely to be displayed prominently in search engine results when a search engine user inputs a word or a phrase that relates to the function of the website or webpage.
The Goal of a Search Engine
When conceptualizing SEO, reminding oneself of the goal of a search engine is helpful.
A search engine (in order to qualify for the name) must index and then display the web pages which contain the best answers for its user’s queries. The first web page displayed for a searched query should provide the best answer.
In order to index and then rank the web pages containing the best answers for its user’s queries in descending order, a search engine must be capable of filtering through billions of web pages and ranking them in descending order from best to least best.
The search engine that is able to accomplish this better than the others, wins. In 2012, the search engine winner is Google.