You still don’t know what the SEO acronym means?
WTH? That’s pitiful! You suck! Just kidding. I’m here to help.
The short answer is: it usually stands for Search Engine Optimization!
Yet you might wonder what the heaven that means!
Thus I prepared a long and sometimes funny answer that will enable you to get and memorize it!
Even a little kid can using this post! Scroll down for that!
What does the SEO acronym mean actually?
Yes, many people will still wonder what the SEO acronym actually means. It’s not just you!
It can mean many things on the Web! It depends on who you ask!
It usually has to do with getting found on Google.
Some tech tabloids e.g. claim that it’s about ruining the Internet!
Yes, SEO or Search Engine Optimization a — as most people refer to it — is still hard to fathom for mere mortals.
Most SEO experts are die hard geeks! Especially when it comes to things like technical SEO.
This post will help you finally to understand and memorize the meaning of SEO! How? Using humor.
What SEO really means and why people don’t want to know
I tried to simplify the meaning of the acronym by coming up with new definitions over the years.
Yet I mostly failed at it. It’s not just me though!
You have to admit: it didn’t work out! SEO is not popular enough.
Why are most people are still oblivious to the meaning of SEO?
People rather understand simple words! Captain Obvious always wins! Or does he?
Over the years I attempted to use many different words to describe SEO:
- findability
- (online) visibility
- popularization
The SEO acronym itself is still a riddle and sounds menacing.
The quest to replace the stigma of SEO was futile until now!
The best thing we can do now is to explain SEO in a way all people can get.
How to explain SEO to a 5 year old kid?
Yet I could even make my daughter understand SEO when she was little.
What did I actually say to my kid? SEO is like helping kids finding sweets.
There is a huge answering machine that remembers where all the sweets are in the world.
Whenever you try to find them it looks where they are.
People who do SEO tell the machine where they have put all the sweets they had.
Without SEO Google might not know where the sweets are hidden.
They would have to dig in the sand like some dogs do when they play around!
They may find some old toy but not the sweets you are looking for.
SEO practitioners don’t like the acronym
Do SEO practitioners still stick to the dated SEO acronym?
It has been coined back in 1997. It still reflects an era long gone.
Thus many are looking for alternatives covering AI search engines as well.
By now most people revel in new acronyms meant to replace SEO.
Yet it’s still rather OMG or Organic Marketing for Google!
OK, this is not really the meaning of OMG as you might know.
It allows you to quickly get + memorize what SEO is all about though.
Let’s take a step back and take a look at the history of the SEO acronym.
After being coined by John Audette back in 1997 it caught on and never got replaced by better terms.
SEO had a bad rep from the early days. Average people still use the term as a synonym for spam.
The “SEO is dead” meme has been reappearing every year ever since.
No matter what new technology appears on the Web someone proclaims that “SEO is dead“.
It usually works as a very successful ragebait so that nobody cares about the irony of history repeating.
Thus even some SEO specialists hate it! Yet most of them stick to SEO despite many trends that come and go over the years.
Even I still use it although I know that the SEO acronym is hard to get, memorize and explain!
- Many wanted to practice Internet marketing to no avail. They still just do keyword research, website optimization and link building.
- Then people tried to become inbound marketers but were sending out all these cold outreach messages to unsuspecting bloggers.
- Some jumped on the content marketing bandwagon by publishing more and better content than the keyword-stuffed gibberish SEO was infamous for.
- In the twenties SEO practitioners even try to hide behind the digital PR misnomer as if there was an a analogue PR equivalent without using the Internet.
- In recent years the AI hype has convinced many marketers to rebrand as AEO, GEO, LLMO or other specialists.
It didn’t help. The SEO acronym still persists!
So what do SEO people actually do?
They are trying to get visitors, conversions and sales mainly by way of Google’s organic results.
Other search engines do exist yet by sheer market share they are negligible.
Google owns around 90% of the global search market share for liked 20 years.
It barely changes with only minor fluctuations based on Statcounter data.
Some claim that many people use ChatGPT and the likes for searching.
Yet measured by actual traffic the number is actually tiny.
We are still performing SEO
Those who work in the “SEO industry” have a love-hate relationship with the acronym. Why? It’s no wonder!
Many still consider SEO a dirty word though so you may decide to “quit SEO” sooner or later.
There is one problem remaining though. How to call yourself now that you want to “retire SEO”?
All the marketing terms are already used by real marketers with university degrees in marketing and 30 years of experience.
Words everybody understands like findability do not sell incredibly expensive SEO services.
They don’t sound complicated enough! So what now? Do we need a new acronym?
Not really! Yet here and for the purpose of memorizing the true meaning of SEO I decided to repurpose some acronyms.
They might sound familiar just like the OMG version I sued above!
How to get SEO with a new acronym: Use humor!
You can’t really replace SEO anymore. Yet you can use other acronyms to explain it.
All you need are acronyms that are positive and do not have the bad rep of SEO.
Ideally they are funny as humor helps you understand and memorize things!
I have repurposed a few common acronyms with a positive vibe or ironic twist that could readily explain SEO.
Here are the best self-explanatory SEO acronym alternatives in my opinion:
- LOL (love of links)
- ROFL (relationship optimization for links)
- SEX (search engine experimentation)
- UFO (usability + findability optimization)
- COMA (content marketing)
- people oriented optimization – POO
- OMG as in Organic Marketing for Google
Now you know and will remember what SEO is all about! LOL!
Engage in genuine LOL
Link love is a common term from the early days of SEO. There was even a WordPress plugin of that name.
In essence SEO is still about the love of links. They are one of the most important ranking factors.
Thus in the best case you link out to others and some of them will reciprocate and link back to you.
There are of course many more ways to attract links.
And yes, it’s all about attraction. When your site’s content is attractive enough people will link to it on their own.
Start ROFL
Many people focus on the technical aspect of SEO.
Yet it’s often about relationships with content creators, editors, publishers.
All these people decide who gets linked to or at least mentioned online.
So in case you want to get cowered by bloggers, influencers or news media make sure to show up.
Connect with people online and ideally offline as well.
This is relationship optimization for links. ROFL! The best ones are added by real humans. They are called editorial links.
People links to other people. Websites that link automatically are less valuable.
Practice SEX
On the surface level SEO is changing all the time.
Inherently it stays largely the same. Google just attempts to mimic what people want algorithmically.
So the algorithms gets improved and more complex all the time.
Thus you need to experiment a lot to find out what actually still works.
Some SEO techniques get too popular or abused so that Google has to tweak it’s algo again to provide unbiased results.
Thus practice SEX or search engine experimentation!
Fly like an UFO
When you watch sci-fi movies UFOs are usually very sleek and round.
They are super fast and stay under the radar.
This is also what SEO is about.
Simple and clean websites that are fast loading and not obviously spammy work best in the short and long term.
So fly like an UFO when it comes to usability + findability optimization.
Wake up from COMA state
As mentioned above many SEOs focus on technicalities while they neglect content and marketing.
It’s like a coma they never wake up from. They just keep on living on the SEO basics.
Content marketing (COMA!) is not only inherent part of SEO.
Helpful content creation is like the most important part of SEO.
Thus wake up from the coma state and focus like 80% of your effort on content creation and promotion.
POO regularly
The more people you attract and convince the better for SEO.
Essentially SEO is about people not search engines.
Google is just an intermediary trying to give people what they want.
Thus make sure you engage in people oriented optimization (POO). Do not just feed the bots!
The more you create content for people first and bots second the more natural links you will attract as well.
Your visibility on Google benefits both directly and indirectly as Google also
Exclaim OMG — it works!
At the end of the day proper SEO works. It make take a while and some major effort.
Creating content to attract links may need many attempts e.g.
So when it finally succeeds you may exclaim: OMG!
Online Marketing for Google works!
Familiar acronyms are your friend when explaining SEO
They can be an effective mnemonic aid when you can’t grasp or remember its meaning.
SEO is about all of the above. Just think of some of the acronyms you usually use next time when you try to explain SEO!
Humor is always the best way to get and remember something that is inherently difficult to understand and memorize.
Do you want an alternative SEO definition you can actually remember?
This one works even without being funny: Search Everywhere Optimization.
This is what people do nowadays using various tools.
And that’s what SEO experts help you with.
SEO experts! Unite for the LOL!
So this article mostly helped beginners to grasp the cryptic meaning of the SEO acronym.
Yet what about SEO experts? How does it help us?
It’s time to unite behind a common flag!
After all we’re SEO practitioners! We can get found everywhere!
We will optimize our sites and get links in Turkey and ultimately outrank all the others!
I just wonder which of these ideas is really the best one.
Which one do you prefer? Personally I tend to focus on people.
People oriented optimization is what SEO 2 is about at its core.
I guess some people think that acronym stinks though!
At least we aren’t PIG‘s though, are we?
Which acronym do you prefer instead of SEO? Tell me on social media. I’m @onreact!
I for one rather prefer self-explanatory terms like findability.
