Search

Search engine optimization

SEO

Definition

Search engine optimization is the work of making pages eligible to be crawled, understood, and ranked in a search engine’s result list so that people who type or speak a query can find them. The usual scoreboard is position, click-through, and organic sessions. The inputs are the page, the site, and the off-site references that tell a ranker the page is about a real thing and is worth showing.

SEO did not vanish when chat windows started answering questions. A page that is blocked, unindexed, or orphaned has fewer paths into a snippet, an AI Overview, or a retrieved citation. Google has said a page must be indexed and eligible to show a snippet before it can appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. That is an SEO gate in front of an AI surface.

How it works

Make the document findable and clear. Title and heading match the query without bait. The first screen answers the question a ranker would extract. Internal links show where the page sits in the site. Technical issues (canonical tags, robots rules, render failures) are fixed so the crawler sees what a user sees. Off site, other domains link or mention the brand. Digital PR is one way to earn those references. Buying them is a policy problem, not a shortcut.

Example: a benefits broker wants to rank for “how COBRA works after a layoff.” The owned guide is 2,100 words, dated, with a worked timeline. It has four editorial backlinks from HR publishers after a digital PR campaign and twelve internal links from related guides. It sits at position 3 and picks up 1,800 organic visits in a month. A competing page at position 11 has richer design and no referring domains. When Google builds an Overview for the query, it draws from the position-3 guide and two .gov primers. The broker’s SEO work did not “optimize the Overview.” It put an extractable, corroborated page into the index the Overview reads.

How it differs

AEO asks whether a passage is the answer a system will lift. GEO asks whether a source is cited inside a generated synthesis. SEO asks whether the page ranks and can be retrieved at all. You can rank and never be the snippet. You can be cited by Perplexity from a page that does not rank in the Google top ten. The three reports should not be mashed into one “visibility” score without naming the surface.

Common errors

Treating SEO as keyword stuffing. Calling a media hit SEO work when the URL is nofollowed and the story is not indexed. Blocking JavaScript rendering and then blaming the engine. Using domain authority as if it were Google’s rank score. Declaring SEO dead because a favorite query now shows an Overview.

Sources