Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the practice of making a site more likely to be found in search results for the things it should rank for. It rests on three pillars: technical health, useful content, and trust from other sites.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of making a website more likely to appear when people search for the things it should be found for. It’s not a trick played on Google so much as making a site genuinely easy to understand, trust, and recommend.

It rests on three pillars. Technical SEO is the plumbing — a fast, crawlable, well-structured site a search engine can read. On-page SEO is content that actually answers what people are searching for, clearly. Off-page SEO is the trust signalled by other credible sites linking to you, or backlinks. Ignore any one pillar and the other two underperform.

Search itself is now splitting into three — classic links, AI answers, and maps — so modern SEO increasingly overlaps with AEO and local SEO.

Quick recall

What is SEO? Making a site more likely to be found in search for the things it should rank for.

What are the three pillars? Technical health, useful on-page content, and trust from other sites (backlinks).

Is it just about Google links now? No — it increasingly overlaps with AI answers (AEO) and local search.