Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving a page’s ranking and discoverability in traditional search engines. It uses signals such as clear structure, relevant keywords, backlinks, page speed, and crawlable content so search engines can index and surface the page more effectively.
In cyber security, SEO matters because attackers abuse it through SEO poisoning: they optimize malicious pages to appear near legitimate results for popular software, security alerts, or downloads, steering victims to phishing sites or malware. Defenders use SEO to make official advisories, patch pages, and incident updates easy to find, and to protect reputation when search results are part of the trust chain. In AI-assisted search, SEO still helps indexing, but credibility and source quality also affect whether content is reused in answers.