Thought I would ask 5,300 people what is the first thing that pops into their head when they hear the word SEO. Here was their responses 
Would you like to see more of these types of polls? I wrote a script to generate them based on the API so its pretty easy for me to do.
@lostinlimaohio (Lilo Verbrechen) says:@shoemoney that the site I’m working with (didn’t design though) should be labeled to damn ugly to pop up in the first 10 pages
@kmullett (hunteeer) says:@shoemoney Search Eng Optimization, act of preparing a site to be technically indexable without incumberances, keyword/phrase saturation etc
@tremorx (Michael Johns) says:@shoemoney some college kid getting paid too much to play around on MySpace and expensing a copy of "serach engine optimization for dummies"
@chrisjacobson (Chris Jacobson) says:@shoemoney SEO? I think of ShoeMoney trying to game Google and acting like he’s the sh*t!
@tehinternetz (Tehinternetz) says:@shoemoney Search Engine Optimization, SEO Guides, SEO Marketing”>Search Engine Optimization…
@keeponrunning (Andrew) says:@shoemoney Search Engine Optimization, SEO Guides, SEO Marketing”>Search Engine Optimization , what else?
@marciajones (Marcia Jones) says:@shoemoney Hours of mind numbing work tweaking html etc. on webpages. Also hours of keyword research for webpages.
@peterwallhead (Peter Wallhead) says:@shoemoney re. SEO: ppl charging way too much to give you free information.
@david_n_wilson (David_N_Wilson) says:@shoemoney Hmmm… SPAM Most of the contacts I have in a week that involve the letters SEO are spam.
@khawe (Kieran Hawe) says:@shoemoney maybe I shouldn’t have said SEO = headaches. I will go with the more politically correct "opportunity"
@corprebel (Rick Wilson) says:@shoemoney To me, SEO = Making sites SE friendly. That’s MY simplistic view of it anyway. heh
@colderICE (John ) says:@shoemoney Rocketscience and the proving of gravitational earth pull on moving objects?!? SEO is this black box that u can spend ur life on
@spooons (christian) says:@shoemoney a set of techniques/practices in coding websites so they are standards based, compliant, and indexable. NOT a person/deceptive
@theNetImp (theNetImp) says:@shoemoney Search Engine Optimization, SEO Guides, SEO Marketing”>Search Engine Optimization of course
@homebiss (homebiss) says:@shoemoney Time wasting. SEO is kinda silly. SE algos change from time to time. We could never understand them.
@mwsmedia (Matthew Selznick) says:@shoemoney Search Engine Optimization. Both white hat and black. There is no gray, in my mind.
@UtahSEOpro (jordan kasteler) says:@shoemoney i think of Search Engine Optimization, SEO Guides, SEO Marketing”>Search Engine Optimization
@juliegribble (JulieGribble) says:@shoemoney isn’t it Search Engine Optimization, SEO Guides, SEO Marketing”>Search Engine Optimization?
@tonychester (Tony Chester) says:@shoemoney I think of highly relevant content written to appeal to Googlers, in a very keyword rich sort of way.
@DominickEvans (DominickEvans) says:@shoemoney google….getting my site placed on google and/or yahoo through SEO
@marenhogan (marenhogan) says:@shoemoney that someone misspelled CEO. HA! I slay me. I need to get back to work.
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2416 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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Perception is Everything (or “Fake It ‘Til You Make It”) 
Should I sell my website? 
I used to be FAT until I had A Duodenal Switch 
{ 68 comments… read them below or add one }
When I think seo, I think search engine optimization, then I think about how easy it is to implement basic SEO and how many people don’t…
Think SEO – Think Rankings – Think Shoe :p
Funny. I don’t think you could have raised any other question that would have gotten more responses.
I met people who do not understand the meaning SEO.
bounce rate.
Hehe, some pretty funny responses there.
I’m sure a lot of these are supposed to be tongue in cheek, but a few responses seem pretty ignorant.
A lot of negativity…
Just folks trying to use the topic of SEO to garner controversy (and therefore, attention!)
Cool… I found a few people to follow in that list.
I didn’t think you’d post my comment… nice! lol
Taking mom and pop to the top.
@shoemoney SEO is what the masters of the intraweb over on Digital Point study.
hilarious.. funny stuff shoe. man i could only imagine what I would ask 5300 followers…
hey we actually got shoe talking back he made his own top commentators list!
Haha, I’m surprised he didn’t put himself as an exception. It should usually be the case that the blogger is the #1 commentator.
I used to think its Search Exec Officer, .. well…
Some of these are hilarious.
Pubcon baby!
Oh, and making money while I sleep without PPC.
SEO has a really negative reputation.
Great poll idea, and a nice way to post the results!
Regards, Matt
Silly Executioner Mistakes..?
wow.. or even Single Edge Octive…
ill use an O word this time…
“post replies” i’m an idiot lol – I wanted to see the replies that were interesting, which, in fact, are shown here
Pretty funny
SEO = Strong Evil Odor
Gotta admit Shoe; the sphinn stuff had me rolling on the floor, and also made me spit up my most recent sip of juice. Ain’t it funny how your spins can be removed one day, and then the owner spins you the next day? I call that weenie-ism. It’s very transparent and very much a pathetic weenie who just can’t stand someone not liking him.
I think of odor more and more and why I don’t do strictly seo.
I think about many annoying people trying to sell you worthless links.
Exactly!
What a comedy, piss myself laughing – “misspelled CEO”, “viagra”, “a lot of drinking”…
A Dummies book
Hahah, good answers…
very simple question. It is Search Engine Optimization.
In my opinion, SEO means spamming search engines.
It involves the art and process of making your website to rank high in major search engines when a specific word is searched by a potential visitor through a particular search engine like Google, Hotbot, AltaVista, MSN Search.
Good points
SEO is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines.
If you are a website designer with out the knowledge of search engine optimization, then you need to wake up. This is the only sure way through which you can attract thousands of visitors to your website.
Those are some pretty hilarious responses! I especially like the Search Engine Orgy response. Never thought of it that way.
There are alot of people out there, though, that will charge a company an arm and a leg to optimize a persons site with the basics just because those companies have no clue. It’s definitely an exploited service.
I own and operate a web design and development business and I offer free search engine optimization for all of my clients. There is no reason not too.
If a website is design correctly it should already have search enginge optimization included in it.
SEO? Must be a term from those master computer type guys at Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net came up with.
When I hear SEO I think money.
money money money.
I always thought it was an acronym
Ew! For me, SEO and confusion are synonymous.
All the little things that other people DON’T do that let you sneak by to the top.
haha….search engine orgy
When I think about SEO I think about “Sites Enemy Order”. This is because it is now adays almost impossible to rank high.
Worthless buzzword.
ahahahaha this is priceless! I love some of these responses!! I would love to see more of these in the future!
SEO = Success
SEO = Senior Executive Officer…lol.
SEO = I want to get rich quick, NOT! Make a good product that people want first. Bring something unique to the market. The world doesn’t really need yet another blog.
Search Engine Optimization.
When I think of SEO I’d like to take a min to think how the search engines changed the face of the internet (and our lives) , twitter? not a big fan , pretty useless web 2.0 website for me ..
Huh, so Jeremy what do you what does SEO really means ?
I am learning seo by the mother of all se’s, google. Within my webmasters section in my google account, I get to see errors and and other details as to what google likes or dislikes pertaining to my blog posts. Its important to look at these details to learn, master, and refine your seo skills constantly in order to find your site with good organic placement.
lol, seo is simple. it’s all backlinks
how did i miss this on twitter?
Get ready for the Google Slap
I think you are one smart dude…I have just started on my internet journey a few months…ago….www.carolstanley1.com..My book For Kids 59.99 and Over…of course I would love to sell a gazillion..but more important I really feel passionately about staying healthy, fit, happy and enjoying the journey along the way…I know you are successfulll and I mostly admire this.because you figured a way…carol stanley
Opps forgot the question..seo.. a new word to make people crazy.
we are there and followers
snake oil salesmen
Some of those answers are hilarious…interesting to see what people think of seo
I think of bounce rate, backlinks, content and rotating my anchor text. How geeky is that?
When I hear SEO, I think: keyword research (using good keywords for site and not saturating it with bad/unnecessary keywords), good internal and external linking, clean coding (validted by W3C), good content, and achieving a good page(s) rank.Search Engine Optimization… So much goes into it…Phew!
When I hear SEO, it gives me a headache because it can be stressful if you dont know how to apply it to your blog or website. I am reading other blogs and trying to gather all the information I can to use SEO on my own. But it basically means to me, google pagerank, keyword rich, optimizing your site.
Doesn’t it stand for Student Employment Office ?
necessary evil that gives me headaches.
Every person nearly has different ideas for different situations, things or thinks.
At my company I hear that about ten billion times a day. I usually think Google.
Duh every animal lover knows that SEO really stands for Sexy Ethiopian Otters