SEO (search engine optimization)

DefinitionSEO is the work of helping search engines crawl, understand and rank your pages so that people searching for what you offer find and click them.

SEO covers technical health (crawling, indexing, speed), content that matches what searchers want, and signals of authority such as links from other sites. Its classic measures are rankings, impressions, clicks and click-through rate in tools like Google Search Console.

SEO is also the foundation of AEO and GEO: AI engines that cite sources retrieve pages from a search index first, so a page that isn't crawled, indexed and relevant can't be quoted.

Learn it step by step

• SEO, AEO and GEO: what each one means (AEO and GEO fundamentals)
• Which audit to use (SEO audits)

Related terms

• AEO (answer engine optimization): AEO is the work of making your pages the source that answer engines (AI assistants and Google's AI answers) quote when they answer a question directly.
• GEO (generative engine optimization): GEO is the work of getting your brand mentioned, recommended and cited in answers written by generative AI such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity.
• SERP (search engine results page): A SERP is the page a search engine shows for a query: organic results plus features such as AI Overviews, ads, maps, videos and "People also ask".
• Core Web Vitals: Core Web Vitals are Google's three user-experience metrics for loading (LCP), responsiveness (INP) and visual stability (CLS), measured on real visits.