Search engine optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practise of enhancing the quality and quantity of internet traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. Search engine optimization (SEO) focuses on getting free, or "organic," traffic instead of purchased, or "paid," traffic. Image search, video search, academic search, news search, and specialised vertical search engines are just a few examples of the numerous types of searches that may generate organic traffic.

Search engine optimization (SEO) takes into account the inner workings of search engines, the computer-programmed algorithms that dictate search engine behaviour, the types of information people look for online, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines, and the specific search engines that people in a particular demographic prefer to use. A better position in search engine results usually means more traffic from the search engine itself, which is why SEO is done (SERP). In theory, these site guests may eventually become paying clients.

In the mid-1990s, when the first search engines started cataloguing the early Web, webmasters and content producers began optimising websites for search engines. Webmasters used to be able to submit a page's address (or URL) to a search engine, and the engine would send a web crawler to the page, follow the links on the page, and return any information it found. An internet search engine's spider will grab a copy of the page and save it to its own server. A separate piece of software, an indexer, collects data from the website, including the text on the page, the context in which it appears, the importance of certain terms, and the connections on the page. This data is subsequently stored in a crawl scheduler and retrieved at a later time.

Webmasters have come to appreciate the benefits of a prominent position in SERPs, opening the door for both ethical and unethical SEO specialists. Analyst Danny Sullivan suggests that the term "search engine optimization" first first in usage around the year 1997. According to Sullivan, Bruce Clay was one of the first to use the term widely.

There are other search engines that have gone out to the SEO community by sponsoring and appearing at industry events including conferences, webchats, and seminars. Major search engines give information and suggestions to aid with website optimization. Webmasters may use the Sitemaps service on Google to see whether the search engine is having trouble indexing their site and to see how many people use Google to access the site. Webmasters may use Bing Webmaster Tools to submit a sitemap and web feeds, find out their site's "crawl rate," and monitor its index status.

It was reported in 2015 that Google was putting a lot of emphasis on mobile search as a central component of their upcoming products. In response, several firms started to adopt a new approach to their Internet marketing strategy.