SEO fundamentals

Overview

SEO earns a ranking in organic search results - still a large, intent-rich demand channel even as AI answers grow. It rests on four pillars: can engines crawl and index you (technical), do your pages match what people search (on-page + content), and do others vouch for you (off-page). Much of this work also helps AI answer engines - do SEO and GEO together (see generative-engine-optimization).

Pillar 1 - Technical (can they crawl & index you)

• Clean robots.txt (don't block what you want indexed), an accurate sitemap.xml, and canonical URLs to avoid duplicate-content splits.
• Core Web Vitals and page speed; mobile-first (the mobile page is what's indexed); HTTPS everywhere.
• Server-render or statically generate important content - don't hide it behind JS.
• Fix crawl errors, broken links, redirect chains, and orphan pages.

Pillar 2 - On-page (does the page match the query)

• Title tag (unique, front-loads the primary term) and a compelling meta description (drives click-through even if not a direct ranking factor).
• Exactly one <h1>; logical H2/H3 structure.
• Match search intent - informational, navigational, commercial, or transactional. A "how to X" query wants a guide, not a product page.
• Internal links with descriptive anchors to spread authority and help crawling.
• Descriptive image alt text; structured data (JSON-LD) for rich results.

Pillar 3 - Content (topical authority)

• Topic clusters: a pillar page plus supporting articles interlinked around one theme - signals depth and authority better than scattered one-offs.
• E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust): named expert authors, primary sources, real experience. Critical for YMYL (health/finance/legal).
• Freshness where the query expects it - update and show real dates (never fake-bump).
• Genuinely useful, people-first content. Thin or AI-slop pages get filtered.

Pillar 4 - Off-page (who vouches for you)

• Earn backlinks from relevant, authoritative sites (original data, useful tools, genuinely linkable content) - don't buy link schemes (manual penalties).
• Unlinked brand mentions and consistent NAP/profile data build entity trust.
• Digital PR and guest contribution where it's genuinely relevant.

Measurement

• Google Search Console: impressions, clicks, average position, CTR, index coverage, Core Web Vitals.
• Track rankings for target clusters and, increasingly, AI Overview presence.
• Leading = indexation + impressions; lagging = organic traffic → pipeline.

SEO vs GEO (do both)

Big overlap (crawlable, authoritative, well-structured content wins both), but the win condition differs: SEO wants a rank; GEO wants a citation inside an AI answer (non-deterministic, measured as a rate). The access and authority work is shared; see generative-engine-optimization for the answer-engine-specific layer.

Do / Don't

• Do match content to the searcher's intent and build topic clusters.
• Do earn links with genuinely linkable assets.
• Don't block indexing by accident or hide content behind JS.
• Don't buy links, stuff keywords, or publish thin pages - all get filtered or penalized.

Common mistakes

• Chasing keywords while ignoring crawl/index health (nothing ranks if nothing's indexed).
• Content that targets a term but not the intent behind it.
• No internal linking, so authority never flows to money pages.
• Buying links or keyword-stuffing (short-term bump, long-term penalty).

Go live with Chronos (optional)

• geo_analyze_website - audit a site for technical/on-page/content gaps.
• geo_get_seo_geo_ideas - prioritized SEO + GEO improvement ideas for a connected repo.
• geo_implement_seo_idea - ship one as a reviewable pull request (never merges to your default branch - you approve).
• geo_mark_seo_idea - track which ideas are done/dismissed.

Connect in ~30s → CONNECT-CHRONOS.md. Free, no card.

See also: generative-engine-optimization, content-marketing-engine.