Any occupation boasts particular practices, principles, and jargon that appear totally opaque to those not in the know. Search engine optimization is no exception. If you're clueless about SEO, or find as an SEO that you sometimes need to explain what you do, and why, to clients or at cocktail parties, keep reading.
A conversation with a reader who understood that he needed to do something to make his site stand out in Google, but didn't know what, drove home to me just how much we talk in a way that others don't necessarily understand. It's not their fault; whether you realize it or not, as an SEO you deal with highly technical concepts every day. If you're trying to help someone with their simple mom-and-pop website, you're probably introducing them to these ideas for the first time. Even the owners of larger e-commerce sites aren't immune to this kind of ignorance.
If it helps, here are two points to keep in mind. First, ignorance is curable. Second, whoever you're helping probably knows far more about their own product or field of expertise than you do – so they're clearly not stupid. They'll catch on better to what you're trying to explain if you gently prod to see how much they know about the way search engines, web sites and the Internet work, and then build up slowly from that basis.
At this point, if you're an experienced SEO, you may be wondering if it's worth the effort. If the client already knows they need help to optimize their web site, and they're willing to hire you, does it really matter how much they understand about the actual process of SEO? In a word, yes. If they understand how the process works, they'll understand why you need to do what you're going to do to their web site – which is, for most people, their “baby.” Furthermore, they'll understand why it's an ongoing process, not something you can do just once and be done with it. They'll cooperate more with you, bringing their own knowledge to bear while respecting yours – and that kind of help is priceless.
Now, if you're one of those people who knows that search engine optimization is important, but feels overwhelmed when you encounter the jargon or the billions of details that all seem to be of life-or-death importance when it comes to your web site, you're probably wondering when I'm going to talk to you. Well, guess what? The rest of this article is addressed to you. So we're going to step back from all of the details surrounding SEO, and start with the very reason for its existence – which is contained in the first two words of the field.
Search Optimization 
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