The SEO and GEO Guide
A practical reference to technical SEO, on-page metadata and AI search. Each guide gives a direct answer, how to implement it, the common mistakes and how to test.
Technical SEO
List of Services
-
Crawling, Rendering and Indexing Search engines discover URLs by crawling, process the page by rendering it, and store what they find by indexing it. A page that fails at any of these three stages cannot rank, and cannot be cited by AI search either.Crawling, Rendering and Indexing
-
Robots.txt Robots.txt is a plain text file at the root of a host that tells crawlers which URLs they may request. It controls crawling, not indexing, and it is a voluntary standard rather than a security measure.Robots.txt
-
Meta Robots and X-Robots-Tag The meta robots tag and the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header tell search engines whether to index a page, follow its links and how to display it in results. They control indexing and presentation, whereas robots.txt controls crawling.Meta Robots and X-Robots-Tag
-
XML Sitemaps An XML sitemap is a file listing the URLs you want search engines to crawl and index. It helps discovery and prioritisation, especially on large or poorly linked sites, but it does not guarantee indexing.XML Sitemaps
-
Canonical Tags A canonical tag tells search engines which URL is the preferred version of a page when the same or very similar content is reachable at more than one address. It is a strong hint, not a directive.Canonical Tags
-
HTTP Status Codes HTTP status codes are the three-digit responses a server sends for every request. Search engines use them to decide whether to index a URL, follow it somewhere else, come back later or drop it.HTTP Status Codes
-
Redirects A redirect sends users and crawlers from one URL to another. Permanent server-side redirects (301 or 308) consolidate ranking signals on the destination and are the right choice for most SEO situations.Redirects
-
URL Structure and Parameters A good URL is short, readable, lowercase, hyphenated and stable. URL parameters need active management because they can create huge numbers of duplicate or near-duplicate pages.URL Structure and Parameters
-
Hreflang Hreflang annotations tell search engines which language and regional version of a page to show to which users. They swap the right URL into results but do not, on their own, improve rankings.Hreflang
-
Pagination and Faceted Navigation Pagination splits long lists across several URLs, and faceted navigation lets users filter them. Both are essential for users and both can generate enormous numbers of low-value URLs unless crawling and indexing are deliberately controlled.Pagination and Faceted Navigation
-
JavaScript SEO JavaScript SEO is the practice of making sure content, links and metadata that depend on JavaScript can be crawled, rendered and indexed. Google can render JavaScript, but it is slower and less reliable than plain HTML, and most AI crawlers do not render it at all.JavaScript SEO
-
Core Web Vitals Core Web Vitals are three metrics Google uses to measure real-world page experience: Largest Contentful Paint for loading, Interaction to Next Paint for responsiveness and Cumulative Layout Shift for visual stability. They are a modest ranking signal and a significant conversion factor.Core Web Vitals
-
Mobile-First Indexing Mobile-first indexing means Google crawls and indexes the mobile version of a site using its smartphone crawler. Anything missing from the mobile version is, as far as Google is concerned, missing altogether.Mobile-First Indexing
-
HTTPS and Security HTTPS encrypts the connection between a browser and a website. It is a lightweight Google ranking signal, a requirement for modern browser features and a basic trust signal for users.HTTPS and Security
-
Crawl Budget and Log File Analysis Crawl budget is the number of URLs a search engine can and wants to crawl on a site in a given period. Log file analysis is the most accurate way to see how that budget is being spent.Crawl Budget and Log File Analysis
-
Site Migrations A site migration is any significant change to a site's URLs, domain, platform, design or structure that could affect search visibility. Success depends on thorough benchmarking, an accurate one-to-one redirect map and close monitoring after launch.Site Migrations
On-page and metadata
List of Services
-
Title Tags The title tag is the HTML element that names a page. It is the main source for the clickable headline in search results, a confirmed ranking signal and one of the highest-impact on-page elements you can change.Title Tags
-
Meta Descriptions The meta description is a short summary of a page that search engines may show as the snippet beneath the title. It is not a ranking factor, but a good one can improve click-through rate.Meta Descriptions
-
Headings (H1 to H6) HTML heading tags give a page its outline. They help users scan, help assistive technology navigate and help search engines and AI systems understand what each section covers.Headings (H1 to H6)
-
Open Graph Tags Open Graph tags are meta tags that control how a page appears when it is shared on social networks and messaging apps such as Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Slack. They are not a ranking factor but they strongly affect how often shared links get clicked.Open Graph Tags
-
Twitter and X Cards Twitter Cards, still named that way in the markup even though the platform is now X, are meta tags that control how a link preview looks when shared on X. If they are missing, X falls back to Open Graph tags.Twitter and X Cards
-
Structured Data and Schema Markup Structured data is code, usually JSON-LD using the Schema.org vocabulary, that describes a page's content in a way machines can read unambiguously. It makes pages eligible for rich results and helps search engines and AI systems understand entities and their relationships.Structured Data and Schema Markup
-
Image SEO Image SEO covers everything that helps images load quickly, be understood by search engines and appear in image search, Discover and rich results: file format, dimensions, alt text, filenames, lazy loading and crawlable markup.Image SEO
-
Internal Linking Internal links connect pages within the same site. They help search engines discover pages, understand how topics relate and judge which pages matter most, and they are one of the few ranking levers entirely under your control.Internal Linking
-
Breadcrumbs Breadcrumbs are a trail of links showing where a page sits in a site's hierarchy. They help users navigate upwards, add consistent internal links and, with BreadcrumbList markup, help search engines understand site structure.Breadcrumbs
-
Favicons and Site Names The favicon and site name appear beside every one of your results in Google Search. They are small brand signals that affect recognition and click-through, and both can be influenced with simple markup on the homepage.Favicons and Site Names
-
Video SEO Video SEO is about making videos discoverable in Google Search, the Videos tab and Discover. Each video needs a dedicated, indexable watch page where it is the main content, supported by VideoObject structured data and a stable thumbnail.Video SEO
GEO and AI search
List of Services
-
What Is GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation)? Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the practice of improving how often and how accurately a brand's content is retrieved, cited and mentioned in AI-generated answers from tools such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Claude.What Is GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation)?
-
How AI Search Works: Retrieval, Grounding and Query Fan-Out AI search engines answer questions by breaking them into several searches, retrieving relevant passages from an index, and asking a language model to write a response grounded in those passages. Understanding that pipeline explains almost every GEO recommendation.How AI Search Works: Retrieval, Grounding and Query Fan-Out
-
AI Crawlers and User Agents AI companies use three kinds of bot: training crawlers that collect data for building models, search crawlers that build an index for AI answers, and user-triggered fetchers that retrieve a page when someone asks a question. Each has its own user agent and can be allowed or blocked separately.AI Crawlers and User Agents
-
llms.txt llms.txt is a proposed standard: a Markdown file at the root of a site that gives language models a curated summary of the site and links to its most useful content. It is cheap to add, but no major AI search provider has confirmed using it for ranking or citation.llms.txt
-
Writing for AI Citation Content gets cited by AI systems when it answers a question directly, is organised into self-contained passages, contains specific and verifiable facts, and offers something other sources do not. Structure makes content extractable, and substance makes it worth extracting.Writing for AI Citation
-
Entity Clarity and Brand Signals An entity is a distinct, identifiable thing such as a company, person, product or place. Search engines and AI models are more likely to mention and recommend entities they can identify confidently, so consistent, corroborated information about who you are is a core part of both SEO and GEO.Entity Clarity and Brand Signals
-
Google AI Overviews and AI Mode AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries shown within Google's standard results, and AI Mode is a separate conversational search experience. Both are powered by Gemini models, grounded in Google's index, and draw on the same pages and signals as ordinary Search.Google AI Overviews and AI Mode
-
Snippet Controls for AI Search You can limit how search engines and AI systems use your content through robots.txt rules for specific AI crawlers, robots meta directives such as nosnippet and max-snippet, and the data-nosnippet attribute. Each control has a different scope, and most involve a trade-off with visibility.Snippet Controls for AI Search
-
Brand Mentions and Digital PR for AI Search AI systems build their view of a brand largely from what third parties say: reviews, forums, news coverage, comparison articles and reference sites. Earning accurate, positive mentions in the sources that models retrieve and trust is one of the most effective GEO activities.Brand Mentions and Digital PR for AI Search
-
Measuring AI Visibility AI visibility is measured by sampling how assistants respond to a defined set of prompts and tracking brand mentions, citations, sentiment and share of voice over time, alongside AI referral traffic in analytics and AI crawler activity in server logs.Measuring AI Visibility