SEO

What it means

SEO is the work that makes a site findable by people searching for what you offer. It rests on three pillars: the technical state of the site, content that answers real questions, and links from sources that carry trust.

It differs from paid advertising in that traffic cannot be switched on in a day - and does not vanish when you stop paying. So SEO behaves like investment in an asset rather than a monthly media cost.

With AI-generated answers, SEO is joined by AEO. It is no longer only about a position in the list of links but also about whether a search engine or assistant uses your text as the source of its answer. The foundation is the same, clear and verifiable answers to specific questions, but the measure is a citation rather than a click.

How it works in practice

The technical foundation is dull and unavoidable: loading speed, responsive design, a legible URL structure, unique titles and descriptions, working internal links, and structured data for search engines.

Content decides the rest. A page that answers a specific question better than the alternatives ranks and stays there. That is why glossaries, case studies and explanations work, and keywords stuffed into text do not.

In the books an ongoing SEO service is an expense of the period in which it was provided, even though its effect lasts longer. A new website or a major rebuild, by contrast, is treated as a long-term intangible asset if its cost and useful life meet the statutory conditions, and is then amortised.

What to watch out for

Watching rankings without conversions misleads: traffic on the wrong terms brings nothing. Beware thin content too - dozens of near-identical pages are now a liability rather than an asset, even when their CTR looks good in week one.

The costliest SEO mistake happens in a site rebuild: new addresses without redirects from the old ones wipe out years of accumulated rankings and the value of backlinks in a single day. Traffic then falls for weeks before anyone notices, and it comes back far more slowly than it went.