What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a subset of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) that focuses on ‘organic’, also known as ‘unpaid’, search results and differs from Pay-Per-Click (PPC), which focuses on paid search. SEO and PPC are two distinct approaches to search marketing, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.

A comprehensive SEM strategy would usually incorporate both approaches to capitalise on the advantages of both, such as SEO delivering long-term growth and PPC delivering immediate visibility. 

How search engines have evolved

Search engines and SEO have evolved significantly over the years, and it may come as a surprise to many that Google has only been around since 1998!

Starting off as basic keyword-matching tools with limited functionality, search engines like Google, Bing, and now Search GPT, have transformed into highly advanced database systems that harness the power of AI and machine learning to understand user intent and the context of search queries, enabling them to deliver more accurate results to users. 

While search engines like Google initially relied on directly matching the keywords users entered with the content on webpages, this encouraged SEO manipulation techniques, like keyword stuffing, and often resulted in poor experiences for users. And it’s this point that helps to explain how Google established itself as the world’s go-to search engine – they recognised the importance of delivering search experiences its users love. 

With emphasis on evaluating trust signals and content quality through improvements that enabled its algorithms to better understand the authority of websites and the broader context behind each search, Google and other search engines are now able to deliver not only highly relevant, but highly personalised search results.

Why is SEO important?

In a digital-first world, having a strong online presence is crucial. With most searches for business products and services starting on a search engine like Google or Bing, the importance of SEO, which helps to increase visibility, boost credibility and enable business growth, can’t be underestimated. 

Here are a few reasons why SEO should play a strong role in your business marketing strategy.

We’ll get into more detail about the specific reasons why SEO is important in another article, but as you know well from your online experiences searching for products and services, the websites with the highest rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs) get most of the clicks. And, therefore, more traffic than their competitors.  

So, just how important is it to rank as high as possible in search results? In a nutshell, incredibly important. So much so that there’s a huge difference between the number of clicks that the website in the #1 spot receives and the clicks that the website at #10 gets.

According to a 2025 study of Google Click-Through Rates (CTR) by ranking position, the website at #1 gets 39.8% of organic clicks compared with 1.6% of organic clicks for the website at #10. That’s a significant difference – 24.9 times as many clicks – and an excellent reason why SEO is increasingly seen by growth-minded businesses as a ‘must-have’, not a ‘nice-to-have’. 

How do search engines work?

To provide users with relevant search results, search engines crawl, index, and rank web pages using web crawlers, which are also known as spiders or bots. These automated programs follow links on websites to discover and download content from across the internet, then organise and store this information in the search engine’s index.

When a user searches for information by entering a search query (e.g., “why is seo important”), the search engine’s ranking algorithm retrieves the most relevant results from the index to deliver to the user. Broken down into basic steps, the process looks like this:

 The crawled pages are stored in the search engine’s index (database)

 A user enters a relevant query, such as “why is seo important?”

 An algorithm processes the query and retrieves the top content from the index

 The search engine displays a list of the most relevant matches for that query. 

Crawling

In SEO, crawling is the process in which search engine bots discover website content. This includes text and all file types that are accessible to bots, including images and videos. Search engine algorithms determine the frequency in which bots crawl websites, the number of pages crawled at a time and how crawled pages are prioritised. 

Creating a sitemap, optimising website structure, linking to other pages internally and monitoring for crawl errors are some of the key crawling optimisations.

Rendering

Rendering is the process in which a browser interprets a webpage’s HTML, CSS and JavaScript codes and converts these into viewable and interactive web content. This process can be performed server-side or client-side, and there are advantages and disadvantages to both. 

For example, Server-Side Rendering (SSR) makes content easier to index and rank as it provides search engines with full-rendered HTML. Due to the reliance of Client-Side Rendering (CSR) on JavaScript, users may experience slower initial page loads, but higher levels of interactivity and, therefore, a stronger user experience. 

Indexing 

Indexing in SEO refers to the process of storing and organising web pages in a search engine database. This process, which incorporates rendering so that search engines can see and evaluate all of the content, layout and elements, takes place once the pages are discovered and crawled. Once a webpage is successfully indexed, it can then be ranked for relevant search queries and shown to users in search results.

In March 2021, Google introduced Mobile-First Indexing. This means that Google crawls the mobile version of webpages, not the desktop version, and uses the information it finds on the mobile version to rank the page for specific queries.

Ranking

In SEO, ranking refers to the position of a webpage in search results for a specific query. The higher a page ranks, the more likely it will be seen and clicked on by users, delivering increased traffic and business visibility. Many factors influence SERP rankings, including keywords, content quality, backlinks, site structure and more, the most important of which we’ll look at in greater detail in the following section.  

SEO ranking factors

Google uses 200+ ranking factors in its algorithm to determine the best search results to show users. Naturally, as one of the world’s most valuable proprietary systems, no one outside of Google can know for sure exactly what complex mechanisms and rules their algorithms use to fetch and rank the most relevant information for users.

However, we do have insights into the core ranking factors which, in very broad terms, fall under the categories of relevance, quality, authoritativeness, usability, context and freshness. 

While all ranking factors and signals are important, some are more important than others and these are the factors that you should focus on first, including:

Quality content: As Google prioritises the user experience and aims to deliver users with informative, relevant and high-quality content, this is a crucial element.

E-E-A-T: A framework used by Google to assess content quality, E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.

Keyword Optimisation: To help search engines identify the content topic to serve to the right users, this involves identifying and integrating relevant keywords.

Technical SEO: Optimisations that aid indexing and visibility, technical SEO covers elements such as crawlability, page speed and mobile responsiveness.

Backlinks: External links that point to your website are seen as trust indicators, with the quality and quantity of these backlinks helping to boost rankings.

User Experience (UX): Websites that deliver strong UX through Core Web Vitals, site security and mobile-friendliness are prioritised by Google in search results.

Brand Signals: These indicators help search engines understand brand authority, credibility and relevance, and are crucial with the rise in AI-driven search.

Schema Markup: Implementing structured data helps search engines better understand the content on a webpage and can increase visibility in rich snippets.

Social Signals: As Google isn’t the only platform to connect with your audience, make your website content unique, engaging and easily shareable. 

By ensuring these factors have been considered in your initial SEO strategy, you’re off to a solid start. However, it’s important to understand that SEO is an ongoing process in which success – and survival – depends on continuous monitoring and optimisations to maintain and improve rankings, and drive targeted traffic to your website.

The anatomy of search results

Just as search engines have evolved significantly over the past 25+ years, so too have Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). In the early days of search, SERPs were simple text listings and little more, but with Google’s ongoing developments setting the bar so high, over the years they’ve evolved into complex, multi-layered and now AI-enhanced information hubs with a slew of features that are continuously tested and updated. 

Most users are aware that Google makes changes to the appearance of their SERPs, but what most don’t realise is just how many changes they make. In 2022, which was one of the most prolific years for search algorithm and SERP updates, Google launched 4,725 changes – that’s an average of 13 changes per day! Bearing in mind that not every search delivers the same SERP outlay, the core components of a results page include:

Organic Results: The unpaid, natural listings delivered by the ranking algorithm that sit below the paid/sponsored listings, and often, featured snippets.

Paid ads: The listings at the top and bottom of a SERP, originally labelled as ‘Ad’ but now labelled as ‘Sponsored’ and paid for with keyword targeting and bidding.

SERP Snippets: Each organic and paid result is a listing snippet that provides a preview of the page’s content and includes a title, the URL and a description. 

Featured snippets: These provide a short answer to a user’s queries and appear in different formats, with AI Overviews the most prominent at the moment.

Knowledge Panels: Displayed on the right side of desktop SERPs and the top of mobile results, these show information about people, places and organisations.

Local Packs: One of the most important features for local searches, these show a map and a list of businesses close by with contact, location and other details.

Other SERP Features: Depending on the search, these can include elements and enhancements like image packs, video carousels and ‘People Also Ask’ sections.

These are some of the most visible SERP features, but with the volume of changes that Google and other search engines make to their search results pages, who knows how long we’ll see them or which new SERP features will be rolled out next!

SEO specialisations

SEO specialisations are the specific areas within the broader field of search engine optimisation, with each specialty focusing on unique audiences and, therefore, leveraging different tactics to achieve specific and often unique goals. The three primary components of SEO (on-page, off-page and technical SEO) can each be seen as SEO specialties, but in a broader sense, SEO specialities include:

Local SEO: Helps businesses appear in search results when people look for services nearby, often using the phrase “near me” or a geographical area, like “subiaco”. Primary strategies focus on optimising Google Business and Maps profiles, ensuring consistent contact details across all platforms and using local keywords on the relevant webpages.

Ecommerce SEO: Helps online stores to rank higher in search engine results. Primary strategies involve improving product pages using technical improvements such as implementing suitable site architecture and enhancing site speed, optimising content with keywords and images with alt text, and building authority with backlinks.

International SEO: Helps businesses to reach audiences in different countries and potentially different languages. Primary strategies involve targeting specific regions with localised content, leveraging hreflang tags, and managing domains or subdirectories.

Enterprise SEO: The process of optimising large and often complex websites to improve search visibility and performance. With the focus on scalability (due to the large size of enterprise websites), primary strategies involve technical SEO, content optimisation, automation and brand management. 

As you can see, these SEO specialisations not only differ in the type of businesses and organisations that use them, but also the audiences they target and the strategies they leverage to achieve their goals. 

The three primary components of SEO

Along with keyword research – which is a component or strategy all of its own and is used in conjunction with other components – the three primary components of SEO are on-page, off-page and technical SEO.

Covering each of these three components is key to developing a comprehensive SEO strategy. At a top-level, these components are: 

On-page: The practice of optimising individual webpages

Off-page: External strategies for establishing trustworthiness and relevance

Technical: Technical optimisations to improve accessibility and performance. 

All three components play a key role in SEO, but it’s important to understand that while you can maintain complete control over the on-page and technical optimisations made on your website, that isn’t always the case with off-site SEO. But more on that later, let’s dive into these three components and look at why each plays such a fundamental role. 

On-page

High-quality content is key to on-page success and it’s crucially important to understand that optimisations need to be made for your two primary audiences. These human users and search engines – in that order. What’s more, it’s important to understand that ‘content’ doesn’t just refer to the words on a webpage and that there are many content elements to optimise so that your webpages appeal to both people and search engines. 

For your human users, specifically your target audience, these content elements include:

 Accuracy and timeliness

 Experience and expertise

 Originality and uniqueness

 Readability and structuring.

With the significant gains that search engines have made in understanding written content, these components are also important for both people and search engines. But be sure to put your human users first when creating and optimising content. And also, don’t forget that while the following content elements are primarily optimised for search engines, they must also be appealing to your target audience, i.e., human users. 

 Title tags

 Meta description

 Header tags (H1-H6)

 Image alt text.

With the emergence of AI and machine learning, content must also be optimised to increase visibility in AI-driven search results. Google’s AI Overviews are the most visible of these in organic search as they sit at the top of search results, but to cover all bases, also consider Google’s Gemini, along with ChatGPT and SearchGPT from OpenAI and Copilot and Perplexity from Microsoft. 

With AI-driven search revolutionising how we search for products, services and information and the ways the results that search engines show us are delivered, implementing Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) strategies is now a necessity. 

Off-page

Off-page SEO refers to the optimisation strategies implemented outside of your website to improve search engine visibility and rankings. This involves building the authority, reputation and trustworthiness of your website in the eyes of search engines by leveraging external factors to create off-page signals that show your website is valuable and relevant. The key components of off-page SEO include: 

Backlinks: As high-quality, relevant backlinks are a ranking factor, link-building involves getting links from other reputable websites back to your site.

Guest blogging: Creating authoritative content for other websites in your industry that showcases your expertise can help you gain exposure and secure backlinks.

Social media marketing: Promoting content on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter helps to increase reach, engagement and secure potential backlinks.

Influencer outreach: Collaborating with social media influencers and bloggers to promote your brand can help to increase exposure and secure backlinks.

Brand mentions: Any online mentions of your brand, whether linked to your site or not, can help search engines recognise brand authority and topical relevance.

User-Generated Content (UGC): Engaging in relevant forums, including reviews, leverages authentic customer experiences to build brand trust and engagement.

Local listings and citations: For local SEO, Name, Address & Phone (NAP) consistency on platforms like Google Business and Yelp helps with visibility.

As you can see from the above, with off-page SEO strategies, there’s a strong focus on increasing exposure and exhibiting authority to secure backlinks from other websites. The higher the quantity and quality of the off-page signals your website receives from other websites and users in search results and across other platforms, the stronger the chances your website will rank higher. In addition to improved search rankings, off-page optimisations help to drive increased website traffic, enhance the authority of your brand and establish a solid foundation on which to further your SEO.

Technical SEO

While technical SEO primarily involves optimising the technical aspects of a website to enhance visibility and improve ranking in search engine results, it increasingly focuses on user and page experience factors. As such, it not only focuses on ensuring that search engines can easily crawl, index and understand website content, but also on making the website faster, more stable and easier to use, especially on mobile devices. 

The core areas of technical SEO include crawlability, indexability and website architecture, site speed and mobile-friendliness, security and structured data. The following are some of the key elements that these core areas comprise: 

Robots.txt: One of the key factors influencing crawlability and indexability, robots.txt informs search engines which parts of your site they can or can’t crawl.

XML sitemaps: To help search engines discover the pages on a site and understand its structure, XML sitemaps list essential information. 

Website structure: Equally important for human users and website crawlers, a logical content structure makes content discoverable and navigation easy.

URL structure: Using clean, simple and, wherever possible, keyword-relevant URLs in a logical structure has benefits for both users and search engines.

Internal linking: Another technical SEO practice that helps users and search engines, internal linking helps site navigation, crawling and spreads link equity.

Duplicate content: Word-for-word content across multiple pages delivers poor UX and impacts ranking – Google doesn’t want to rank pages with duplicate content.

Page speed: As a major ranking factor, fast load times not only impact search rankings but are crucial for delivering a good user experience and strong brand.

Image optimisation: To improve page speed and loading times and stability by reducing the overall page size, properly format and compress images.

Minify CSS, JavaScript & HTML: Another key optimisation that improves loading speed and site performance, minifying also has strong user experience benefits.

Mobile-first indexing: More users engage with online content on mobile devices and since 2021, Google ranks and indexes websites based on the mobile version.

Responsive design: A key factor in making websites mobile-friendly, designing for all screen sizes ensures usability across all devices and is crucial for UX.

HTTPS: A secure site with HTTPS is a ranking factor and is important for delivering strong UX and establishing trust with users, which has brand benefits.

Broken links: Just as important for human users as search engines, repairing broken links improves user flow and UX, as well as search engine accessibility.

Structured data: The language search engines use to read webpage content, adding schema markup also enables search engines to show rich search results.

When properly implemented, these technical optimisations can lead to enhanced visibility and increased traffic, and deliver better user experiences that build brand trust. 

Core Web Vitals (CWV)

Google incorporated Core Web Vitals (CWV) into its ranking algorithms in 2021 and, while not a standalone ranking system, they’re one of Google’s most important ‘page experience’ signals. 

So, what are Core Web Vitals? CWV is a group of specific metrics that Google uses to assess the overall user experience on a webpage and are designed to measure how users perceive website performance, more specifically, speed, responsiveness and interactivity, and visual stability. The three primary CWV metrics are:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures loading speed. LCP tracks how long it takes for the largest visible element in the viewport to fully render from the time the page starts loading. A good LCP score is 2.5 seconds or faster.

First Input Delay (FID): Measures responsiveness. FID measures the delay between a user’s first interaction (e.g., clicking a button or link) and the browser’s response. A good score is 100 milliseconds or under. A good FID score is 100 milliseconds or less.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability. CLS measures the amount of unexpected layout shift of the visual page content to provide a smoother experience for users. A good CLS score is 0.1 or less.

Core Web Vitals are important not only because Google has stated that they’re a ranking factor but also because they’re integral to providing a great user experience. As we know well, not only are websites that provide a good user experience more likely to rank higher in SERPs, they’re also more likely to provide experiences that lead to happier users who stay on your site and engage with your content, and convert into customers. 

So, by improving your CWV metrics, you’re not only aligning your website with Google’s ranking signals but also delivering a superior experience to users. This can lead to improved online visibility, more organic traffic and better business outcomes, including stronger branding and a competitive advantage over rival businesses. 

SEO metrics

To understand the effectiveness of your SEO efforts, identify areas for improvement and optimise your strategies to achieve the best results, tracking the right SEO metrics is key. These are measurable values that indicate how well your website and individual webpages are performing in search engine results, and key SEO metrics include:

Organic traffic: The total number of users who find and visit your website through unpaid, organic search results in Google, Bing and other search engines.

Keyword rankings: The position from 1 – 100 in which your site ranks in search engine results pages (SERPs) for specific keywords relevant to your business. 

Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of users who click your website link after viewing it in search results. (CTR = (Clicks / Impressions) * 100)

Website authority: An SEO indicator that predicts how effectively a website can rank in results. (Moz Domain Authority, SEMrush Authority Score, etc.)

Backlinks: External websites that link to your website and help with rankings by demonstrating your website’s authority and reliability to search engines. 

Core Web Vitals (CWV): A metric that measures load times, responsiveness and visual layout consistency, and is important for both users and search engines. 

Conversions: The number of users who complete a specific goal on your website, for example, making a purchase or filling out a contact or subscription form.

Partnering with an SEO agency

Scott Shorter is an Australia-based SEO agency with five-star reviews and SEO results that speak for themselves. We provide SEO services for local and international clients focused on quality, and our testimonials come from some of the most successful sites within respected industries.

When you’re ready to improve your SERP visibility and bring your website to the attention of your target audience, get in touch with the team to discuss your options.