Refract Group2026
Glossary
SEO (search engine optimisation)
SEO (search engine optimisation) is the work that helps a website’s pages get found, understood and chosen in unpaid search results: how the site is built, what its pages say, and what other sites say about it.
- Mentions and linksOther sites that cite or link to you
- Titles and snippetsWhat the result says before the click
- Page contentAnswers in the words people search
- Technical accessCrawlable, rendered, indexed and fast
SEO in detail
- Also called
- Search engine optimisation, Search engine optimization, Organic search, Search optimisation
- Updated
What it is
Google describes search in three stages: crawling, where its software fetches pages; indexing, where it works out what each page is about and stores it; and serving, where it picks the results for a search. SEO is what a site does to come through those stages well, and then to be the result a person picks.
- Technical SEO: whether crawlers can reach, render and index the pages, whether each page has one address, and whether the site is fast.
- On-page work: titles, headings and copy that answer the question in the words people search with, and internal links that show which pages matter.
- Off-site signals: links and mentions from other sites, reviews, and profiles that describe the company the same way.
Results earned this way are called organic. Google says it does not accept payment to crawl a site more often or to rank it higher, so the paid results above them are ads, bought separately.
Why it matters
For a technology company, search is where buyers check a claim before they talk to sales. Someone hears a product name in a meeting and looks it up, or searches the problem and finds whoever explained it best. A site that is not indexed, or whose pages are titled with internal product names, is missing from both. A page that answers a question well can keep bringing visitors after the work is done, and the AI answers built on search results draw on the same pages.
How we do it
We run SEO and GEO as one job on one site, starting from a dated record of where a company appears in search and AI answers.
The first site we audited this way was our own, in November 2026. The search data showed little discovery from searches that did not include our name. Service pages whose copy had been signed off were live and linked but still marked noindex, so we opened them to search and added them to the sitemap. Case-study titles were the client’s name alone, and each now says what the work was. After the release we requested every URL in the sitemap on the live site: each loaded and none was marked noindex. Whether that improves discovery needs a longer run of search data to judge.
An example
Say a company sells rostering software to hospitals and gets search visits only for its own name. Search Console shows a support article appearing, around position 40, for “nurse shift swap rules”. The SEO work rewrites that article so its opening lines answer the question, retitles the product page in the words rostering managers use, links the two, and asks the hospital software directories that list the product to correct its old description.
Common mistakes
- Choosing keywords nobody buying would type. A page can rank first for a phrase with no buyers behind it, so start from the questions prospects ask in sales calls and check the search data after.
- Reading an accepted sitemap as indexed pages. Search Console accepting a sitemap means it read the file, and whether each page made it into the index has to be checked page by page.
- Crediting one edit with every movement. Rankings move for reasons that have nothing to do with your change, so compare like periods and note what else changed before you credit a fix.
SEO vs SEM
SEO earns unpaid places in search results by improving the site, and SEM usually means buying paid search ads, though some people use SEM to cover both.
| SEO | SEM | |
|---|---|---|
| Paid with | Time and work on the site | Money per click or impression |
| Shows up | Over months | As soon as the campaign runs |
| When spending stops | Pages can keep ranking | The ads stop |
| Where it appears | Organic results and AI answers | Ad slots marked as sponsored |
Questions
What people ask about SEO.
SEO, search engine optimisation, involves making sure search engines can crawl and index a site, writing pages that answer what people search for in the words they use, and earning links and mentions from other sites. The aim is for the right pages to be found and chosen in unpaid search results.
There is no fixed timeline for SEO. Technical fixes, such as reopening a page that was blocked from the index, usually show first, once the page is recrawled. Content and links build over months, depending on the competition and how visible the site already is. Anyone who gives a date for a ranking is guessing.
Yes. Google says that optimising for its generative AI features is still SEO, and a page has to be indexed and eligible for a snippet before AI Overviews can link to it. ChatGPT and Perplexity search the web with crawlers of their own. A page that cannot be found in search is hard for any of them to cite.
No. Search engines decide what ranks, and Google says it does not accept payment to rank a site higher. An SEO provider can commit to the work: access fixed, pages rewritten and measurement in place. We don’t guarantee rankings or citations, and nobody honestly can.
Where this shows up in our work
Related terms
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