What is search engine optimization (SEO)?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving a website so it ranks higher in the organic, unpaid results of search engines such as Google and Bing. The goal is to earn more qualified visitors without paying for each click.
SEO is usually split into three areas. Technical SEO makes sure search engines can crawl, render and index your pages, with work on site speed, clean URLs, sitemaps and mobile-friendliness. On-page SEO covers the content itself: matching search intent, clear headings, useful text and structured data. Off-page SEO is about reputation, mainly links and mentions from other trusted websites.
Quality and trust matter too. Google's quality rater guidelines describe them with the E-E-A-T framework: experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.
Why SEO matters for AI visibility
SEO is still the foundation of being found online, and it also feeds AI search. Several AI assistants search the web before they answer, and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode draw on pages from Google's index. Pages that are crawlable, indexed and clearly relevant have a better chance of being picked up and cited.
But a top ranking no longer guarantees attention. AI answers often sit above the classic results or replace them, and they mention brands based on many sources, not only your own pages. That is why SEO now works alongside generative engine optimization (GEO), which focuses on how AI models mention and cite your brand. Our article on AI visibility vs SEO covers the five main differences.
How to combine SEO with AI visibility
Fix the technical basics first: fast, crawlable pages with important content in the HTML, not only in JavaScript.
Build pages around real questions and answer them directly at the top of each section.
Earn links and mentions on sites your audience trusts, such as industry media and review platforms.
Keep facts about your company consistent across your site, profiles and directories.
Measure both sides: rankings and clicks for search, mentions and citations for AI answers.
Trackbase covers the GEO side of that picture: it tracks how 11 AI models mention and cite your brand, so you can see where strong SEO already translates into AI visibility and where it does not.
Examples of SEO
A Dutch bicycle webshop rewrites its category pages to answer buyer questions about frame size and battery range, and adds product structured data.
A B2B payroll software vendor fixes slow, script-heavy pages so its feature and pricing content loads as plain HTML.
A dental clinic in Rotterdam completes its business profile with opening hours, services and photos to show up in local map results.
A cybersecurity startup publishes original research that industry media link to, which helps its rankings and gives AI models a source to cite.
Frequently asked questions
Is SEO still relevant now that people use AI assistants?
Yes. Search engines remain a major source of website traffic, and many AI features rely on search results to find their sources. Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode link to pages from its index. What changes is how you measure success: rankings and clicks alone no longer show whether your brand is part of the answers people read.
What is the difference between SEO and GEO?
SEO optimizes pages to rank in search engine results and earn clicks. GEO, short for generative engine optimization, aims to get your brand mentioned, recommended and cited in answers from AI models such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. The two overlap, since strong and crawlable content helps both, but GEO also depends on how other sources describe you.
How long does SEO take to show results?
It depends on the competition, the state of your site and how much you change. Technical fixes can take effect within weeks once pages are recrawled, while content and authority usually take months to build. AI visibility can move faster in assistants that search the web live, which is one reason to track both.