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A place you cannot buy
Google's ordinary, unpaid results are not for sale; Google says so itself. Paying gets you into the blocks marked Sponsored, not higher in the list below them. What you pay for in SEO is the work on your site. That is the difference with search engine advertising, where you pay per click and the ad disappears when the budget runs out. Taking a site into other countries is covered in international SEO strategy.
Search engines, then and now
The term appeared in the second half of the 1990s, when search engines such as AltaVista and Yahoo started ordering a fast-growing web and companies noticed that a place at the top brought visitors. Google, founded in 1998, also ranked pages by the links pointing at them. That turned SEO into a trade: first full of tricks, such as hidden keywords and bought links, then, after years of updates that punished those tricks, a trade of building good pages. Today Google weighs relevance, quality, usability and context, and a new layer sits on top: AI answers that cite sources, the field of GEO.
Find, read, rank: what Google does
Google works in three steps. First it crawls: a program, Googlebot, follows links and your sitemap and fetches your pages. Then it indexes: Google reads the text, the title tag and the structure, and stores the page. Then it ranks: for every search, Google picks from billions of pages the few that best answer the search intent behind the words. SEO means getting through the door at every step.
Three steps of Google, three layers of work
What Google does
- Step 1CrawlGooglebot follows links and your sitemap and fetches your pages.
- Step 2IndexGoogle reads the text, the title and the structure, and stores the page in its index.
What you do about it
Google can read you
- Fast pages, on a phone too
- One address per page, old ones with a 301
- A sitemap, no page on noindex by mistake
Google understands you
- One page per buyer question
- The search term in title, H1 and first paragraph
- The answer at the top, with real figures
Google trusts you
- Other sites linking to you
- A complete Google Business Profile with reviews
- A name people actually search for
A fault in the first layer makes the other two worthless: a page Google cannot read never ranks.
Technology, content and trust: the work per layer
| Layer | What you do | How you measure it | How long it takes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Technical | Speed, one address per page, 301 redirects for old addresses, a sitemap, no page on noindex by mistake | The SEO checker, the speed test, Search Console | Days to weeks, then upkeep |
| Content | One page per question, chosen on search volume and intent, with a title, a meta description and schema markup | Impressions and positions per term in Search Console | Every month while you grow |
| Authority | Links from other sites, your Google Business Profile, reviews | Referring sites, searches for your name | Months, the slowest part |
Order matters. A site with technical faults wastes every text; a site with fine texts and no links climbs slowly.
One site, several countries
Sell in more than one country and there is a fourth part: a version of each page per language, linked with hreflang, so a buyer in Germany gets the German page and a buyer in Belgium the Dutch or French one. Search terms differ per market too: the same service is searched with other words in the Netherlands than in Flanders. We build multilingual websites with a term map per language for that reason.
From its own name to 1,593 search terms
In mid-September 2026, people found Business Centrum, a payroll and HR office in Ghent, almost only by its name. We fixed the technical base first, then wrote a page for every question employers ask, in four languages, with an official source behind every figure, and a term map of 182 search terms, each on its own target page. Five weeks later:
Business Centrum, five weeks later
- impressions a day in Google, up from 220
- 10,200
- non-brand search terms on page one, up from 13
- 1,593
- search terms in the top 3
- 518
What you pay for, and what stays
In the Benelux, ongoing SEO from an agency typically costs 500 to 2,500 euros a month, and an audit 500 to 2,500 euros once; the SEO cost guide shows what each model buys, and SEO specialist rates shows the hourly side. What it returns is traffic you do not pay per click for, which keeps coming in a month you do nothing. How long that takes depends on your market and your starting point: at Business Centrum it took five weeks, on a site that first needed its technical base fixed.
Search engines and your own site: short answers
Is SEO the same as showing up in ChatGPT?
Not quite, but they are close. AI assistants often take their sources from search results, so a site that is not found is rarely cited. The extra work to be named as a source is called GEO.
What is the difference between SEO and SEM?
SEO is the work on your site to rank higher in the ordinary results for free. SEM, or search engine advertising, is paying per click for an ad at the top. Ads work the same day and stop when you stop paying; SEO takes weeks to months and stays.
How do I know my SEO works?
In Google Search Console, free from Google: per search term you see how often you were shown, how many people clicked and your position. Watch the terms without your brand name: they show whether new buyers find you.
Can a Belgian agency do SEO for the Dutch or German market?
Yes, if it researches the terms per market instead of translating. Flemish and Dutch buyers use other words for the same thing, and a German page needs German terms with proof from German search data.