The main areas of SEO
- Technical SEO: making sure search engines can crawl, render and index the site, and that it is fast, secure and mobile-friendly.
- On-page SEO and content: pages that answer what people search for, with clear titles, headings and internal links.
- Off-page SEO: earning links and mentions from other trusted websites.
- Local SEO: visibility in map results and local searches.
How search engines decide
Google looks at what a search means, which pages are relevant, how helpful and trustworthy their content is, how other sites refer to them and whether they give visitors a good experience. It changes its systems thousands of times a year, including a few large core updates.
SEO vs paid search
Search ads bring traffic straight away but stop when the budget stops. SEO takes months to build, but the traffic keeps coming without a cost per click. Most businesses do best with both.
SEO and AI search
AI Overviews and AI assistants such as ChatGPT now answer many questions directly. They still draw on websites that are clear, well structured and trusted, so good SEO also helps you appear in AI answers.