Technically search engine optimization (aka SEO) is about keeping your content 'decodable' by search engines so they can know what you're talking about. Things like using <h1></h1> to indicate a heading and then using text rather than a rendered GIF as your headline font. Keeping your copyrights and other links up to date, being on topic and not linking to off topic random pages. All of those things are 'SEO.'

The author is talking about driving traffic to the web site. Maybe that is Web User Herding (WUH) or something. Buying adwords to show up at the top of Google's results, creating thousands of inbound links on various sites to increase your page rank, those things are a waste of time unless you're living off your web site and will die if the money stop coming in.