SEO (search engine optimisation)

Three things decide it: content that genuinely answers a query, a site that is technically crawlable and fast, and other credible sites linking to yours. The rest is detail.

SEO is slow - six to twelve months before meaningful traffic on a new domain - and then unusually durable. It is the highest-leverage channel for anyone who cannot afford to buy attention.

Slow means something specific on a new domain: six to twelve months of very little, then compounding. Publishing thirty pages in one month does not beat publishing thirty across a year, because coverage of a subject and links to it accumulate rather than trigger. The site that wins is usually the one that was still publishing in month fourteen.

What changed recently is who reads the page. Answer engines now summarise results rather than list them, so a page that restates what already ranks earns nothing from either. What gets quoted is specific: a worked calculation, a number with its assumptions attached, a clear definition in one sentence. Hedged generality is invisible to a model and to a reader in exactly the same way.