Definition
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the practice of designing a website's technical foundation, content, and external authority signals so it ranks higher in organic (non-paid) search results for queries that matter to the business.
SEO is a long game. Unlike paid ads, where spend produces clicks within hours, SEO compounds over months and years — but the asset is durable. A well-ranked page can drive traffic for a decade with maintenance; a paid campaign delivers nothing the day you turn it off.
The discipline splits into technical SEO (crawlability, schema, performance, mobile, internal linking), on-page SEO (content quality, keyword targeting, title/description tags, headings), and off-page SEO (backlinks, brand mentions, authority signals). All three matter; weakness in one caps the upside of the others. Most accounts have one weak link that, when fixed, lifts everything else.
Origin
The term emerged in the mid-1990s as early search engines (AltaVista, Lycos, Yahoo, then Google in 1998) created the need for a discipline focused on ranking. Google's PageRank algorithm (1998) made backlinks the dominant ranking signal for nearly a decade.
How it works
- Audit current state — technical health, content coverage, backlink profile.
- Define target queries by intent — informational, commercial, transactional, navigational.
- Build content that wins for each target intent (the page Google should reasonably rank).
- Fix technical foundation — crawl errors, slow pages, broken links, missing schema.
- Earn backlinks through deserving content, digital PR, partnerships.
- Monitor rankings, traffic, and conversions; iterate on what's working.
When to use it
Use when
- On any business with buyers who search for what you offer.
- When you want a sustainable, compounding traffic source independent of ad spend.
- Especially when competitors are already ranking — late SEO is harder than early SEO.
Skip when
- If you need traffic this week. SEO compounds — months to first wins, year+ to authority.
- On categories where buyers don't search (some B2B niches buy through relationships, not search).
Key metrics
- Rankings on target queries.
- Organic traffic to commercially-relevant pages.
- Conversions from organic traffic.
- Domain authority / referring domains over time.
Examples
- SEO is a 6-month investment that pays off for years.
- Good SEO is good UX with structured data on top.
- Page-one ranking on the right keyword drives more revenue than the entire paid campaign.
In practice at Makreate
Makreate SEO retainers cover technical, on-page, content, and link-building work — measured against ranked queries that actually convert. A recent B2B client had a strong technical foundation but no content for any of their commercial keywords. We shipped 24 long-form articles over six months, each targeting a high-intent commercial query. By month nine, organic traffic to the commercial pages had 5× and qualified inbound leads had 3.6× — at less than the cost of a quarter of paid acquisition.
Advertising →Common mistakes
- Chasing rankings on high-volume keywords with no buyer intent.
- Skipping technical foundation. Slow, uncrawlable sites cap content's upside.
- Building links via spam directories or PBNs. Modern Google penalises and the recovery is brutal.
- Treating SEO as a one-time project instead of an ongoing discipline.
- No conversion tracking. Ranking without conversion is a vanity number.
Frequently asked
How long does SEO take?
First wins in 3–6 months on uncompetitive long-tail. Authority on competitive queries: 12–24 months. Mature SEO programmes pay off for years after that.
DIY SEO or agency?
Below ~$5K/month total marketing — DIY with templates and a couple of tools (Ahrefs, Search Console). Above that — specialist help usually pays back through faster wins and better technical execution.
AI content and SEO?
AI-assisted content is fine; AI-generated mass-produced low-effort content is penalised by Google's helpful-content updates. The bar is value to the reader, not how it's written.