SEO ‘redefined’
Friday, May 16th, 2008
The definition of search engine optimisation (SEO) has been reviewed, following a call by one digital marketing blog for comments from across the industry.
The shoemoney blog received new definitions from some of the industry’s big names including Danny Sullivan, who it referred to as the ‘godfather of SEO‘.
Mr Sullivan said, as an individual "an SEO is someone who understands how people search for information (on the web and in other ways) and ensures that they or their clients are visible in the unpaid listings that are provided".
Other contributors provided varied interpretations. Rand Fishkin said it is "the combination of tactics and strategies" and Neil Patel referred to it as "the art of understanding search engines and using that knowledge to make a website rank high".
Replies were overwhelmingly positive despite one respondent, who preferred to be known as Black Hat, saying it "is when somebody tries to cheat or take shortcuts so that their website shows up higher [in search results rankings] than it deserves to show up".
A recent report by Netcraft has suggested there are approximately 165 million websites, 3.1 million more than in March.









