SEO, still the foundation

Every AI answer engine sits on top of a search index, which means the old discipline never went away; it became the entry requirement. This section covers search visibility for Indian businesses without the folklore.

1. What does SEO cost in India? Real numbers and what they should buy

   Credible SEO for an Indian SME runs from roughly ₹20,000 a month at the low end to ₹1,00,000 and beyond in competitive categories. Quotes far below that usually buy activity reports rather than results. This article breaks down where the money goes, why quotes vary tenfold, and how to judge a proposal before signing it.

   Published 17 August 2026

• E-E-A-T

  E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness: Google's framework for judging whether content deserves to be believed, increasingly mirrored by AI assistants choosing what to cite.

• Structured data

  Structured data is machine-readable markup, usually JSON-LD using schema.org vocabulary, that states facts about a page and its entities explicitly instead of leaving machines to infer them from prose.

• AI Overviews

  AI Overviews are the AI-generated summaries Google shows above its classic results, composed from indexed pages and citing a handful of sources, which now absorb a large share of informational clicks.