Search engine optimisation or SEO is the practice of improving a website so that search engines can crawl, understand and show its pages for relevant searches. SEO mainly concerns organic search results rather than paid adverts.
Good SEO is not just a technical trick. It combines useful content, clear page structure, crawlable links, fast and accessible pages, accurate metadata and a site that answers what users are looking for.
Purpose
The purpose of SEO is to make useful pages easier for search engines and users to find. A search engine needs to discover a page, fetch it, understand its content, decide whether it is worth indexing and then decide when it is relevant to a search query.
SEO work can help at each stage. It cannot guarantee a ranking, and it should not be treated as a way to force poor content into good positions.
On-page SEO
On-page SEO covers the content and structure of individual pages. Important elements include:
- clear titles;
- accurate headings;
- useful body text;
- descriptive internal links;
- helpful image alt text where images carry meaning;
- concise page descriptions;
- structured data where it fits the content;
- readable URLs.
Strong pages are written for readers first. Search engines are better at understanding natural text than pages stuffed with repeated keywords.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO covers whether search engines can reach, render and understand the site. It includes crawl rules, sitemaps, canonical URLs, redirects, broken links, status codes, mobile usability, page speed, structured data, duplicate content and JavaScript rendering.
A technically broken site can hide good content. Common problems include accidentally blocking important pages in robots.txt, returning the wrong HTTP status code, creating redirect loops, using duplicate titles on many pages or publishing pages that need scripts before any useful content appears.
Content Quality
Search engines try to show pages that satisfy the user's search. Useful content is specific, accurate and written for a real audience. Thin pages, copied text, doorway pages and generic filler are weak because they give users little reason to stay.
For a wiki, good SEO usually follows from good editorial work: clear titles, sensible internal links, useful section headings, original summaries, working references and pages that answer the subject directly.
Links and Reputation
Links help search engines discover pages and understand how pages relate to each other. Internal links help readers and crawlers move through a site. External links from other sites can signal reputation, but only when they are earned naturally.
Buying links, mass link exchanges, hidden links and spam comments can damage a site's reputation. Search engines publish spam policies to discourage these tactics.
Measurement
SEO is measured through search traffic, impressions, clicks, average position, indexed pages, crawl errors, conversions and user behaviour after people arrive on a site. Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools are common tools for monitoring search performance.
Rankings change over time because search engines update their systems, competitors publish new pages and user behaviour shifts. A stable SEO strategy is based on useful content and sound technical structure rather than chasing every temporary ranking change.
See Also
References
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