The simple answer is that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization or Search Engine Optimizer.
The long answer is a lot more involved.
Vangie Beal in her blog post on SEO has this to say:
Search engine optimization is a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of search engine (SERP) -- including Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines.
Most people who use search engines rarely click beyond the second or third page of search results, some even failing to make it past the first page. This means that where a site ranks in a search is crucial for directing incoming traffic to your site. A user is more likely to visit a site with a higher ranking on the search results page, as this is likely the only results the user will see. If your site does not follow classic SEO formulas, and therefore does not show in the top pages when searched for, it is very difficult to develop organic traffic from searches. Since Ads make up a large part of result pages, organic traffic then is any traffic that you have not paid for.
According to Rand Fishkin (one of the founders of moz.com marketing analytics) SEO is “the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of the traffic that you earn through the organic results in search engines.”
We’ve already touched on organic traffic, but let’s look at what he means by quality and quantity:
Quality: You want traffic coming to your site for the products, services or information that your site offers. If they are driven to your site but discover that your website does not serve their need, they are not the type of traffic you want in the first place as they are extremely unlikely to become users or customers. It is important to use SEO to bring in the right visitors who are interested in what your website offers.
Quantity: After your have established the right organic traffic from search engine results pages, because your site meets current SEO practices, then you want to have a significant amount of traffic.
Here is a quick little video that explains SEO in very simplistic terms:
To truly master SEO, one must be able to understand how searches are made by users and how those searches are served up to the users by search engines (such as Google). Think about the service or products your site offers and imagine what a user would would put into a search bar as their first attempt to find a site offering their desired result. If you are new to creating a website and SEO, then go now and do this — see what your competitors are doing and check out the sites that show up in the top spots of the SERP. Are there some practices that you might want to adopt? Have they used keywords you hadn’t thought of? Is there something you can do on your site better than they are? Maybe focusing on a specifically local niche is what will set you above. Whatever you come up with, make yourself a list and follow through!
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