InformationWeek SMB TechEncyclopedia

Designing a Web site so that search engines find the pages easily and index them. The goal is to have a page rank as high up on the results list as possible, or be on the first results page, or at the very least on the second results page. Search engine optimization (SEO) includes the choice of keywords used in the text paragraphs and the placement of those words on the page, both visible and hidden inside meta tags.

Keep 'Em Guessing
Search engines use different criteria for ranking pages, and those criteria are periodically changed to keep Web page designers from falsely describing their pages and obtaining a permanent, high ranking. This is why an entire industry exists to help Web site owners obtain high results page ranking. See page ranking, cloaking, shadow domain, meta tag, site map, surface Web, deep Web and social search engine.