SEO

American  

abbreviation

Digital Technology.

1. search-engine optimization: the methods used to boost the ranking or frequency of a website in results returned by a search engine, in an effort to maximize user traffic to the site.

   The first step in SEO is to generate keywords that are relevant to your site's content.

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SEO British  

abbreviation

1. computing search engine optimization

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Etymology

Origin of SEO

First recorded in 1995–2000

Example Sentences

In traditional SEO, techniques that worked for Google would generally also work for Bing, Yahoo and other search engines, and what worked for sites in one industry would usually work in others.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 22, 2026

For a long time, people’s experience of the internet has been shaped by SEO and the tactics companies use to boost their rankings.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 22, 2026

In some ways, this is an evolution of SEO, or search engine optimization—the strategies companies have been using for decades to appear atop Google results.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 30, 2026

That matters more than in traditional SEO because LLMs generally need more information to answer detailed, conversational questions that build on a given user’s history.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 18, 2025

Believers this year packed funding rounds for a swarm of startups selling answer engine optimization, or AEO, also known as generative engine optimization, which they argue requires different tactics than SEO.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 18, 2025