The Types of SEO, Real Quick
Traditional SEO includes on-page SEO, off-page SEO, technical SEO, local SEO and platform-specific SEO (like YouTube and Pinterest). The latest evolution is Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)—a strategy focused on improving your content’s visibility in AI-powered tools. Each can play a role in helping your content reach the right people online. Keep reading to understand each one.
If you’re in business, you’ve come across those three letters—SEO. You might even have it on your never-ending business to-do list, circled with mild panic and underlined three times.
You’ve heard it’s something you’re supposed to be doing, but if someone asked you to explain what it involves?
Cue the shoulder-shrug emoji.
SEO often feels like a domain that’s been claimed by acronym-loving tech bros—so I get it.
But at its core?
Search Engine Optimisation is about helping the right people find you online—whether they’re searching on Google, YouTube, Pinterest, or asking a robot like ChatGPT what to do next.
So, if you’ve ever nodded along when someone mentioned “technical SEO” but quietly wondered if your website even has that, this one’s for you.
I’m going to walk through the different types of SEO—what they’re called, what they mean, and why they’re useful—so you can stop feeling like SEO is some secret club you weren’t invited to.
SEO Goes Beyond Google Now
When most people think of SEO, they think of Google. Maybe Bing, if they’re feeling particularly smug. But search engine optimisation is about increasing visibility across any platform that functions like a search engine.
That includes YouTube (yep, it’s the second-largest search engine in the world), Pinterest, and even TikTok.
Anywhere your perfect-fit client or customer is typing in a question and expecting a useful result?
That’s SEO territory.
5 Traditional Types of SEO
Think of these categories of SEO as your fundamentals. Your classics. They’ve been around for years, they still work, and they’re the first place to look if your website’s not pulling its weight.
1. On-Page SEO: The Content, Keywords, and Structure
On-page SEO is everything that happens on your website—the stuff you write, design, and structure to make sure your pages are clear, useful, and findable.
Think:
- Using keywords in your headings, page titles, meta descriptions and URL so they clearly reflect your content and encourage people to click
- Writing content that answers your audience’s actual questions
- Use proper heading structure (H1, H2, H3) to break up that content to help both search engines and real humans follow what you’re saying
- Making sure your images have alt text
- Linking between related blog posts and pages on your site
Bonus: Most of these practices also improve your website’s accessibility, which is a win for inclusion and search engine rankings.
2. Off-Page SEO: Building Trust Beyond Your Website
Off-page SEO is all about reputation. It’s what others say about you (and how the internet treats your site) when it’s not on your own turf.
This includes:
- Backlinks (links from other websites to yours)
- Guest blog posts you write for others or podcasts you’re featured on
- How your content is shared on social and third-party platforms
- Mentions of your brand name across the web
Search engines view these as trust signals—if credible sites are linking to you or talking about your work, that boosts your perceived authority.
This is also where concepts like E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) come into play. Google wants to know that you know your stuff and that others trust you, and it’s becoming a bigger ranking factor as Google tries to prioritise helpful, people-first content.
3. Technical SEO: The BTS Powerhouse
This is the bit most people want to ignore—and fair enough. Technical SEO isn’t sexy. But it is vital.
It’s everything under the hood of your website that helps search engines find, index, and understand your content. It includes:
- Mobile responsiveness (your site has to work beautifully on a phone)
- Site speed (if your page takes forever to load, users bounce and Google notices)
- Proper site structure and navigation (so your readers get to where they are going quickly and easily)
- Clean code
- A secure site (that’s the HTTPS you see at the front of URLs)
- All links work, and there aren’t any link redirection issues
A technically sound website isn’t just better for SEO—it also makes your site nicer to use, which keeps people on it longer. Win-win!
4. Local SEO: For Service Providers with a Physical Footprint
Local SEO helps your business show up when people are actively looking in a geographic-specific area—and it builds trust before they’ve even clicked your contact form. These are the searches like “Perth dietitian” or “wedding photographer near me.”
So, if your business serves a specific area, this type of SEO is your secret weapon.
To help your local SEO, you’ll want:
- A well-optimised Google Business Profile
- Consistent use of your business name, address, and phone number (NAP)
- Collecting reviews from happy clients
- Creating local content (e.g., blog posts about your area or collaborations with local businesses)
- Mobile-optimised, fast-loading pages (for those on-the-go searches)
- Local backlinks and citations (from business directories, local papers, etc.)
5. Platform-Specific SEO: Pinterest, YouTube + More
Yes, your website is most important, but we don’t want to completely overlook the platforms your audience is already using.
YouTube? Your video title, description, and tags all influence where your video ranks.
Pinterest? Your board names, pin descriptions, and even image file names make a difference.
If your perfect-fit client is searching on these platforms, you’ll want to optimise for their ecosystems, too.
It’s technically part of the off-page SEO puzzle—and it can drive serious traffic to your website when done well.
The New Wave of Search: The Rise of AI-Generated Answers and ‘GEO’
Currently, the most significant changes in SEO are happening around how people search. More people are turning to tools like ChatGPT, Bing’s Copilot, Perplexity, and Claude to get instant, nuanced answers and skipping traditional search engines like Google altogether.
Enter Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)
GEO is the overarching strategy for creating content that’s easy for AI tools—like answer engines such as ChatGPT or Perplexity, and AI-enhanced features like Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode—to understand, summarise, and surface.
These tools pull from all kinds of publicly available online content. And while they don’t always credit the original source (rude, I know), your insights being included in those answers can still build credibility and visibility for your brand.
To give your content the best chance of being picked up:
- Write content that’s skimmable, structured, and straight to the point
- Use clear formatting like bullet points, headers and FAQs
- Address ‘questions’ with specific, useful responses
- Use schema markup to help tools interpret your site structure (i.e. using code to tell search engines what each part of your page is for)
- Ensure your site isn’t blocking AI crawlers and is correctly indexed
Noticing a pattern here?
Turns out, the things that help your site rank well in traditional SEO? They’re the same things AI tools are looking for, too.
What’s working now—and what will keep working—is built on the same core ideas that have always mattered: creating genuinely useful content, making your site easy to navigate, and helping people find what they’re looking for—fast.
This “new wave” of SEO is not replacing traditional SEO—it’s built on top of it. AI overviews, answer engines, voice search, even Bing Copilot—they all depend on well-structured, valuable content that already exists on the web (the ethics of this is a whole other convo).
Whether it’s classic SEO or the shiny new stuff, a few key themes stay the same:
- Clear, scannable content that answers real questions
- Strong technical foundations (like mobile responsiveness and fast load times)
- Helpful internal links and logical page structure
- Unique, experience-driven perspectives
- A focus on human user needs, not just pleasing search bots
So yes, SEO is evolving—but if you get the basics right, you’re in a good position for what’s to come.
P.S. You don’t need to master every type of SEO.
Each SEO category—on-page, off-page, technical, local, and the newer GEO (which let’s face it, is mostly SEO with a rebrand!)—serves a different function. And together? They form the engine that helps your website work for you.
This quick explainer has hopefully helped you understand what role each one plays, so you can make smart choices about what you focus your time, energy and marketing budget on.
And if one of those smart choices was getting a bespoke SEO strategy for your business to help boost your visibility online, then I’ve got you covered. My strategies are designed to help the right people find you at the right time, in the right places, in ways that are practical (and doable) for your business.
