Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search Engine Optimisation is the practice of structuring your website's content and technical setup so search engines like Google rank your pages in their list of results.
Why it matters
SEO earns organic clicks from search results — still the largest source of traffic for most Australian small businesses.
It also underpins everything in this hub. Google's crawler feeds a number of answer engines, and the same qualities that help Google read your site — clear headings, fast loading, sensible internal links — make it easier for an answer engine to read too. A site that's technically healthy for search is rarely unhealthy for AI.
How to apply it
- Give every page a unique `<title>` and meta description. Duplicates across pages make it unclear which one should rank.
- Use one `<h1>` per page, describing what that page is about in plain language.
- Keep important pages within one or two clicks of your homepage. Anything buried deeper is crawled less often.
- Compress your images. Slow pages lose both visitors and crawl budget.
- Link between related pages. Internal links show search engines how your content fits together.
- Check your site works on a phone. Most local searches happen there.
Common mistakes
- The same title tag repeated across every page
- Multiple
<h1>tags competing on one page - Orphan pages with no links pointing to them
robots.txtaccidentally blocking pages you want indexed- Contact details rendered as an image instead of text
Quick answers
- Is SEO still worth doing now that AI answers questions directly?
- Yes. Answer engines draw on indexed web content, so a site that search engines can't read well is unlikely to be quoted well either.
- How long does SEO take to show results?
- Technical fixes can be picked up within days to weeks. Content and authority changes usually take months.
- Do I need an agency for this?
- Not for the basics. AussieAEO identifies the technical and content issues to fix, prioritises them, and explains what to change. If a fix requires code access, you can pass the recommendation to whoever manages your website.
