What is SEO (search engine optimisation)?

What SEO means

SEO stands for search engine optimisation. Google describes it as helping search engines understand your content, and helping people find your site and decide whether to visit it.

SEO does not buy a place in results. Google says it does not accept payment to crawl a site more often or rank it higher. Adverts are a separate system with their own rules.

The core practices of SEO

Access comes first. Google says crawling can fail because of server problems, network issues or robots.txt rules that block its crawler. The robots.txt file tells crawlers which parts of a site they may request.

Then make content easy to find and read. Google points to internal links, important content in text form and a good page experience. Titles and headings should describe what each page covers. Write them for the person searching, not for a machine.

Content quality runs through all of it. Google says its ranking systems aim to put helpful, reliable information made for people first, not content made to manipulate rankings.

SEO and AI search

Some search results pages now include an AI-written answer. Google says AI Overviews give a generated response with links to supporting websites.

Google says the best practices for SEO remain relevant for these answers, with no additional technical requirements. To be a supporting link, a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. A snippet is the short description under a search result.

Google says it does not promise to crawl, index or serve any page, even one that follows its Search Essentials. Search Essentials are Google's core guidelines for sites in Search.

Search Console is Google's tool for website owners to see how their site performs in Search.

How Carqo relates to SEO

Carqo is AI search analytics software, not an SEO service. AI assistants and the search indexes they draw on can only use what they can reach and read. The website audit in Carqo looks at those foundations on your public pages.

You or your web developer make every change. Passing the audit does not mean an AI assistant or search engine will name or quote your business.

In practice

1. Check access Confirm that your important pages load and that robots.txt does not block the crawlers you want. Check your hosting or security settings too, since they can also turn crawlers away.
2. Check indexing Use Search Console to see whether your key pages are indexed. Remove noindex tags or duplicate addresses that should not be there.
3. Improve the pages Give each page a clear title, a descriptive heading and useful text. Make sure structured data matches what the page shows.

Sources

• Google Search Central, SEO Starter Guide Link checked 29 October 2026
• Google Search Central, In-depth guide to how Google Search works Link checked 29 October 2026
• Google Search Central, AI features and your website Link checked 29 October 2026
• Google Search Central, Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content Link checked 29 October 2026