Ask ten people what SEO is, and you’re likely to **get ten different answers**. Given the industry’s unsavoury past, this is hardly surprising. Keyword stuffing, gateway pages, and comment spam earned the first _search engine optimisers_ a deservedly poor reputation within the web community. Snake oil salesmen continue to peddle these harmful techniques to unsuspecting website owners today, perpetuating the myth that optimising your website for Google or Bing is an inherently nefarious practise. Needless to say, **this is not true**.