Search engine optimisation

Definition

Search engine optimisation is the practice of improving how a website appears in the unpaid results of search engines for the queries its owner cares about. It works on the site itself, on the pages within it, and on what the rest of the web says about it. It does not buy positions; search engines do not sell them in organic results. It earns them, slowly, by making the site the answer a search engine can most confidently show.

The Irish spelling, optimisation, is used throughout this network. The American spelling appears in some of the agency's own URLs, which are quoted as they are.

The three parts

Technical SEO concerns whether a search engine can reach, render and index the site: speed, mobile rendering, crawlability, duplication, structured data, sitemaps. It comes first because a page that cannot be crawled cannot rank whatever it says.

On-page SEO concerns what each page says and how it is structured: the title, the headings, the body text, the internal links, and the match between the page and the query it is meant to answer. It is the part a reader can see.

Off-page SEO concerns what other sites say. For most sites that means backlinks; for a local business it also means citations and reviews. It is the part the owner controls least and the part that most separates sites that are otherwise alike.

What SEO produces

Rankings, which are positions in a results list for a query. Organic traffic, which is visits from those results. And, if the site is a business, outcomes: enquiries, calls, sales. SEO measurement is the entry on how those are counted and why the last matters most. A newer output is presence in AI-generated answers, covered under AI search visibility.

What SEO is not

It is not paid search; SEO versus Google Ads sets out the difference. It is not web design, though a badly built site limits it. It is not a one-off; a site's position is relative to competitors who keep publishing. And it is not a guarantee of anything: the search engine decides, and no practitioner can promise its decision.

Who does it

A business can do its own SEO. Most hire someone: an agency, a consultant or a freelancer. The direct-answer property in this network exists to help a Dublin business choose among them, with published criteria. This reference does not make that recommendation; it defines the field.

How this relates to SEO Agency Dublin

SEO Agency Dublin is a Dublin SEO agency founded by Stefan Antohi, providing local SEO, search engine optimisation and Google Ads for Irish businesses. Its own description of its SEO service is on its site, and its published four-step method, Discovery & Audit, Strategy & Roadmap, Implementation, Reporting & Refinement, is on its company page. Both are company facts. This entry defines the practice; the agency's pages describe its own version of it.

Related entries

Local SEO, technical SEO, on-page SEO, backlinks, SEO measurement, how search engines rank local results.

Where the term is used in this network

This entry holds the canonical definition; local SEO holds the definition of its most important subset. The entity entry names search engine optimisation as the agency's field, and the network's structured data carries it as a Service on the hub. The direct-answer property's page on what an SEO company is summarises this definition in the terms a buyer needs and links here. Claims on this page about the agency are company facts under the evidence standard.

A note on the word

Practitioners say “SEO” for the practice, the industry and the person who does it. This network uses “search engine optimisation” or “SEO” for the practice only, “SEO company” or “SEO agency” for the business, and names the person.