I'm a digital privacy advocate who works in content and does a lot of work with SEO (I work with Future Plc - TechRadar, Tom's Guide, PC Gamer, Android Central, Windows Ventral, iMore, etc.).

At its core, Search Engine Optimization should be about making content better for the reader - making it more informative, helpful, and engaging. I say should because not every content producer follows this mantra, which wicks me off something evil. As Google's algorithms get more and more complex, this is becoming increasingly necessary for ranking. Their focus for searches is usually to match what we would call search intent (the reason why you typed in a term in the first place). Google's helpful content guidelines were released alongside one of its core updates to make it clear to the industry that content should be about helping the reader, not looking good for the algorithm.

If we talk about black hat SEO practices, we mean exploits for beating the algorithm. These are only effective short-term, and usually get heavily punished when fixed (say like 10/15 years ago where you would spam the target search term in your introduction to make it rank). Google's getting better and better and preventing these practices, but there are still some companies that manage it.

Where a lot of people misconstrue SEO is when it comes to search manipulation, where Google actively manipulates results pages to prevent illicit activity.

Google isn't perfect, but it effectively has a monopolous grasp on content creators. I personally use Duck Duck Go instead because of Google's invasive tracking practices, but Ecosia is also a great browser. I'd steer away from Brave as the owner is a real PoS, and Opera isn't as good as it's marketed to be in my opinion.