{"id":143703,"date":"2022-06-28T01:59:10","date_gmt":"2022-06-28T06:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/?p=143703"},"modified":"2026-04-30T14:40:04","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T19:40:04","slug":"seo-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/seo-process\/","title":{"rendered":"The SEO Process in a Nutshell (Updated for AI Search)"},"content":{"rendered":"
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of growing a website\u2019s traffic from organic search results. Here are the five general steps of the SEO process:<\/span><\/div>\n
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  1. Get your technicals right<\/strong>. Make sure your website is crawlable and indexable. <\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Find a keyword to target<\/strong>. The topic of your page and the main source of organic traffic.<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Create an optimized page.  <\/strong>Both users and Google want useful and interesting content. <\/span><\/li>\n
  4. Build links to the page<\/strong>. Links are one of the most important ranking factors.<\/span><\/li>\n
  5. Optimize for AI search visibility. <\/strong>The same fundamentals plus a few moves that get you cited in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and AI Overviews. When this guide first went live, AI search wasn\u2019t a thing; that\u2019s why I\u2019m updating it.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In this article, I\u2019ll explain and demonstrate how this process works using some of the SEO tactics Ahrefs used to grow into a 9-figure SaaS company.<\/span> <\/p>

    Contents<\/div><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/div>