Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving the visibility and overall performance of websites and web pages in search engine results pages (SERPs). It focuses on increasing the quantity and quality of traffic from unpaid (organic) search results rather than paid advertising. SEO applies to multiple search formats, including web, image, video, news, academic, and vertical search engines, as well as AI-assisted search interfaces. SEO is commonly used as part of a broader digital marketing strategy and involves optimizing technical infrastructure, content relevance, and authority signals to improve rankings for user queries. The objective of SEO is to attract users who are actively searching for information, products, or services, thereby improving brand visibility, user engagement, and conversions.
History Webmasters and content providers began optimizing websites for search engines in the mid-1990s as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Search engine users would query the URL of a page, and then receive information found on the page, if it existed in the search engine's index. ALIWEB and the earliest versions of search engines required website developers to manually upload website index files in order to be searchable and widely did not utilize any form of ranking algorithm for user queries. The emergence of automated web crawlers would later be used to proactively discover and index websites. This led to website developers to optimize their website’s search signals, including the use of meta tags, to achieve greater visibility in search results. According to a 2004 article by former industry analyst and current Google employee Danny Sullivan, the phrase "search engine optimization" came into use in 1997. Sullivan credits SEO practitioner Bruce Clay as one of the first people to popularize the term. In some cases, early search algorithms weighted particular HTML attributes in ways that could be leveraged by web content providers to manipulate their search rankings. As early as 1997, search engine providers began adjusting their algorithms to prevent these actions. Eventually, search engines would incorporate more meaningful measures of page purpose, including the more recent development of semantic search. Some search engines frequently sponsor SEO conferences, webchats, and seminars. Major search engines provide information and guidelines to help with website optimization. Google has a Sitemaps program to help webmasters learn if Google is having any problems indexing their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website. Bing Webmaster Tools provides a way for webmasters to submit a sitemap and web feeds, allows users to determine the "crawl rate", and track the web pages index status. In 2015, it was reported that Google was developing and promoting mobile search as a key feature within future products, resulting in brands and marketers shifting toward mobile-first experiences.
Relationship between SEO and large language models In the 2020s in response to the AI boom, digital marketers developed new optimization approaches for LLM-based search, referred to as answer engine optimization (AEO) or generative engine optimization (GEO). These terms are often used interchangeably, and other related terms exist, such as AI engine optimization (AIEO). Digital marketers optimizing for GEO tend to focus on content structure, authority signals, and structured data, with the goal of becoming a trusted, citable source in AI-generated responses.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
