The SEO questions
people actually ask.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the practice of improving a website so that search engines rank it higher for relevant queries. It matters because organic search is the highest-intent traffic channel available — users are actively searching for what you offer. Unlike paid ads, organic rankings compound over time and don't stop the moment you stop paying.

On-page SEO covers what's on your pages — content quality, keyword usage, heading structure, internal links, and meta tags. Off-page SEO covers what happens outside your site — primarily links from other websites, brand mentions, and reviews. Technical SEO covers the infrastructure — crawlability, site speed, Core Web Vitals, structured data, and indexation. All three work together; neglecting any one limits the others.

First indicators typically appear within 30–60 days. Meaningful traffic growth develops over 3–6 months. Compounding returns build after 6–12 months. The exact timeline depends on your domain authority, competition level, how quickly issues are fixed, and how consistently content is published. New domains take longer than established ones.

Domain Authority (DA) is a proprietary metric invented by Moz — not something Google uses. Google uses its own assessment of a site's authority based on the quality and relevance of links pointing to it, content depth, and trust signals. DA is a useful proxy for competitive analysis but shouldn't be treated as a target in itself. What matters to Google is demonstrated expertise, consistent quality content, and editorially earned links.

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness — a framework from Google's Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines. It is not a direct ranking factor but describes the signals Google uses to assess content quality. Experience means first-hand knowledge. Expertise means subject matter depth. Authoritativeness means recognition from others in the field. Trust means accurate, transparent, and verifiable content. Sites with strong E-E-A-T signals consistently rank better than those without.

Core Web Vitals are three page experience metrics used by Google as a ranking signal: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint — loading speed), CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift — visual stability), and INP (Interaction to Next Paint — responsiveness). Pages that perform poorly on these metrics are at a disadvantage in competitive SERPs. They matter most when other ranking signals are equal between competing pages.

Crawl budget is the number of pages Googlebot will crawl on your site within a given timeframe. For small sites (under a few thousand pages), crawl budget is rarely a concern. For large e-commerce sites with faceted navigation, infinite scroll, or large catalogues, crawl budget management is critical — Googlebot may be wasting crawl allowance on low-value filtered URLs instead of indexing important product pages.

A canonical tag (rel="canonical") tells search engines which version of a URL is the preferred one when the same or similar content exists at multiple URLs. Use it to consolidate duplicate content — for example, product pages accessible via multiple filter combinations in e-commerce, or www vs non-www versions of pages. Without canonical tags, search engines may split ranking signals across duplicates, diluting authority.

JavaScript doesn't inherently hurt SEO, but it can create indexation problems if implemented poorly. Googlebot renders JavaScript, but rendering is resource-intensive and may be delayed. Content that only appears after JavaScript execution may be crawled later than static HTML — or not at all if the rendering fails. Single-page applications (SPAs) and heavily client-rendered sites need careful technical SEO to ensure content is crawlable.

Structured data (most commonly JSON-LD) is code added to a page that explicitly tells search engines what the content means — not just what it says. Google uses it to generate rich results (FAQ dropdowns, review stars, recipe cards, etc.) and to feed its Knowledge Graph. AI search systems including Google's AI Overviews use structured data heavily for extraction and citation. It's one of the highest-ROI technical implementations available.

The map pack (also called the local pack) is the block of 3 local business listings that appears in Google search results for location-intent queries. It's powered by Google Business Profile data. Ranking factors include: proximity to the searcher, Google Business Profile completeness and activity, review quantity and quality, citation consistency across directories, and local landing page relevance. Map pack rankings are separate from organic rankings — a business can rank in the map pack without ranking organically and vice versa.

A citation is any online mention of your business's Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP). Citations appear in business directories, review sites, and local websites. Consistent NAP across citations is a local ranking signal — inconsistencies (different phone numbers, misspelled addresses, old locations) can harm local visibility. The quality of citation sources matters: Yelp, TripAdvisor, industry directories, and chamber of commerce listings carry more weight than low-quality directories.

Google reviews are a significant local ranking factor — both the quantity and average rating matter. Importantly, the recency and response rate also signal to Google that the business is active. A strategy of consistently earning genuine reviews from real customers, and responding to all of them (positive and negative), compounds over time. Incentivising reviews violates Google's terms; earning them through service quality and a simple ask is the sustainable approach.

Local schema markup is structured data added to a website's code that explicitly identifies the business to search engines — its name, address, phone number, opening hours, geo-coordinates, service area, and type of business. The most relevant types are LocalBusiness and its subtypes (e.g., ProfessionalService, Restaurant). Local schema reinforces the same information in your Google Business Profile and citations, making the signals consistent and machine-readable.

AEO is the practice of structuring content to be extracted and cited by answer engines — including Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Bing Copilot, and voice assistants. Where traditional SEO focuses on ranking pages in blue-link results, AEO focuses on having your content appear as the cited source in direct answers. The signals overlap significantly: authority, clear structure, accurate information, and schema markup matter for both.

Google's AI Overviews draw from pages that already rank well in organic search — the crawled and indexed web. They favour content that directly answers a question, is authoritative on the topic, uses clear structure (headers, lists, concise paragraphs), has relevant schema markup (FAQPage, HowTo, Speakable), and comes from a source Google trusts. Being cited in an AI Overview is largely a function of having content that ranks on page 1 with strong E-E-A-T signals.

ChatGPT's base model was trained on web data up to its knowledge cutoff — so older SEO content may be embedded in its training. With Browse enabled (Bing integration), ChatGPT retrieves live web results and cites sources. Perplexity similarly uses live web search. For AI systems that use live retrieval, the same factors that drive organic rankings largely determine what gets cited: authority, relevance, clear structure, and trustworthy signals.

Speakable schema (SpeakableSpecification) is a structured data type that marks specific sections of a page as suitable for text-to-speech delivery — used by Google Assistant, voice search results, and AI audio summaries. You point it at CSS selectors containing the most answer-rich content (hero paragraphs, FAQ answers). While not a mainstream ranking factor, it is a direct signal for voice and AI audio surface eligibility. High-value for service businesses targeting voice search.

Topical authority is the degree to which Google (and AI systems) recognise your site as a comprehensive, trustworthy source on a given subject. It's built by covering a topic cluster deeply — a pillar page on the main topic, supported by cluster articles covering every related subtopic — rather than publishing isolated posts across unrelated subjects. A site that comprehensively covers "local SEO" (GBP, citations, local schema, map pack tactics, review strategy) will outrank a site with one generic local SEO post, even with lower overall domain authority.

A pillar page is a comprehensive, long-form page covering a broad topic at a high level — it targets a head keyword and links out to cluster articles for depth. Cluster pages are focused articles that cover specific subtopics in depth — they link back to the pillar, reinforcing topical authority through internal linking. Together they form a content cluster. The pillar ranks for broad terms; cluster pages rank for specific queries and funnel authority to the pillar.

The honest answer: as long as it needs to be to fully address the topic — and no longer. Word count is not a ranking factor. Thin content that doesn't satisfy the query underperforms. Padded content that hits an arbitrary word count with filler also underperforms. Informational queries typically warrant longer, comprehensive treatment. Transactional queries may need concise, clear answers more than length. Match the format to the intent.

Yes — links remain one of the strongest ranking signals. What has changed is quality weighting: a single editorially earned link from a relevant, authoritative source is worth more than dozens of links from low-quality directories or guest post farms. Google has also become significantly better at identifying and discounting manipulative link schemes. The sustainable approach is earning links through content worth citing — original research, expert commentary, useful tools, and genuine PR.

Link building is the practice of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. Safe methods: digital PR (earning coverage by being genuinely newsworthy), expert commentary and HARO-style contributions, creating linkable assets (original research, free tools, definitive guides), and building genuine relationships in your industry. Unsafe methods: paid links, private blog networks (PBNs), mass guest posting on low-quality sites, link exchanges, and automated link building. The risk-to-reward ratio of manipulative link building has never been worse.

The metrics that matter depend on your business goal. For lead generation: organic traffic, organic conversions (form fills, calls), and organic-assisted revenue. For e-commerce: organic revenue, organic transactions, and organic conversion rate. For local businesses: Google Business Profile views, direction requests, calls from search, and map pack position. Rankings are useful leading indicators — but a page ranking #1 for traffic that doesn't convert is a vanity metric, not a business result.

Google Search Console (GSC) is a free tool that shows how Google crawls, indexes, and ranks your site. The most useful reports for SEO: Performance (queries you rank for, impressions, clicks, position), Coverage (indexation errors and excluded pages), Core Web Vitals (real-user performance data), and Manual Actions (any penalties applied). GSC should be checked monthly at minimum — it surfaces crawl issues, lost rankings, and indexation problems before they become serious.