What is SEO in web development?

What is SEO in web development?

SEO is important to any business that operates online, but many don't realize that search engine optimization needs to be built into the web design process -- not added in later

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a methodology by which developers make websites best seen by 'crawlers,' or 'bots,' -- programs that roam the Internet looking for new content, categorizing it, and determining if content is worthy of inclusion in search results.

By and large, these bots look for 'Meta' information (contained in the header of the document,) key words, and images. Software then determines if the content of the site is consistent with the meta information.

If SEO isn't consistent with the site's content, it's not likely to get noticed by browsers. If your website has effective SEO, the site is likely to be more highly ranked among others, and with that ranking, more popular. With that popularity comes higher rankings, as well. Most people don't bother going to the second page of a search result, so successful SEO is key.

Coders used to have a way of 'tricking' bots into thinking the site was about something it wasn't. They would create large blocks of text the same color as the background of the document. You couldn't see it, but the bots could. Porn sites were famous for it -- they would add large blocks of text that had words like, 'Car,' 'Football,' ,'Sports,' as well as 'Porn' terms. When someone searched for 'used car,' the search engine would return porn. Bots have gotten more sophisticated since.