🔍 SEO / GEO

Search Engine Optimization

seo · search engine optimisation · organic search optimization · search optimisation · technical seo

Definition

SEO is the systematic process of increasing a site's visibility in organic search results through technical optimisation, relevant content and the growth of external link authority.

The three pillars of SEO

SEO splits into three branches, each of them necessary:

1. Technical SEO — whether a search engine can find, read and index the site:
– Load speed (Core Web Vitals)
– A correct URL structure and navigation
– The robots.txt file and the XML sitemap
– HTTPS, canonical tags, hreflang for multilingual sites
– Crawl budget for large catalogues

2. On-page SEO — the relevance of content to what people search for:
– A title and meta description for every page
– H1 to H3 heading structure, the semantic core
– Unique content for categories and product pages
– A match with search intent

3. Off-page SEO — the site’s authority in the eyes of the search engine:
– Backlinks from quality resources
– Brand mentions and citability
– E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness)

SEO for e-commerce: the specifics

Online stores run into SEO problems other sites do not:

Problem	Solution
Duplicate content (one product in several categories)	Canonical tags
Thousands of faceted filter pages	robots.txt, noindex or canonical
Cannibalization between categories and product pages	A clear split of queries by page type
Out-of-stock product pages	Redirect, or hold the page with alternatives
Slow loading because of images	WebP, lazy loading, a CDN

Important: technical SEO carries extra weight in e-commerce — crawlers struggle with JavaScript-rendered sites (SPA and headless builds). Make sure critical content is visible in the HTML before any JS runs.

SEO and personalization: where they meet

Personalised content creates an SEO risk: if the search crawler sees a different version of the page than the user does, that is cloaking and it breaks Google’s rules. The answer is to serve the crawler the base, unpersonalised version of the content and apply personalization through client-side JavaScript after load.

For e-commerce specifically: recommendation blocks, especially with a server-side integration, should contain SEO-relevant content only when it is static or based on aggregated data rather than on an individual profile.

Monitoring tools

Google Search Console — positions, CTR, technical errors
Yandex Webmaster — indexation, Yandex traffic and crawl errors, relevant if you work in Russia or CIS markets
Ahrefs / Semrush / Serpstat — positions against competitor semantics, the link profile
PageSpeed Insights — Core Web Vitals and technical metrics

Frequently asked questions

How does SEO differ from paid search (PPC)?

PPC delivers traffic immediately, for as long as you pay. SEO builds organic visibility gradually — 3 to 12 months to a result — but the traffic stays without an advertising budget. The cost per click in SEO falls over time; in PPC it is fixed or rising. For e-commerce the two channels complement each other.

Which matters more: technical SEO or content?

Both are necessary, but in a particular order. Technical SEO is the foundation: if the site is not indexed or takes eight seconds to load, content will not save it. Once the technical core is in place, content takes the leading role — it creates relevance to queries. Link authority amplifies the effect but does not replace the first two.

How do Google and Yandex differ in their ranking approaches?

Google puts more weight on link authority and E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness). Yandex, the dominant search engine in Russia and several CIS markets, leans more on behavioural factors such as time on site, bounces and CTR, and on geo-dependence. If you work in those markets you have to optimise for both engines and their regional particularities.