Organic search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of appearing higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs) naturally.
Organic search is one of the most effective channels to get traffic or conversions because it is free – compared to paid search, where you have to pay for your placement and clicks – and users understand that you are relevant to what they typed.
A very lame joke in the SEO industry goes, “The best place to hide a corpse is on page two of Google because no one will look there.”
Pretty lame, but the thing is, if you’re not on the first page of SERPs, no one will see your pages.
Think about the last time you went to page two of Google to do something like read an article or buy a product. No matter what you tried to do; there’s almost no way you went to page two to do it.
We may use many strategies for organic search, such as keyword research and content optimization or fixing technical issues that prevent a user from accessing the site.
In this article, we will focus on the different ways you can increase your organic visibility, how SEO works, why this channel is important for your business, and how to get started with organic search.
How Does Organic Search Work?
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The simplest way to refer to organic search is to think about what is the most important search result for a user to see when they type a specific keyword or query into Google.
Organic search is a process consisting of various digital marketing strategies to ensure that our result appears first or, at least, on the first page of search results.
Appearing on the top of Google is not some magic trick. It takes coordination and collaboration from many different departments, executive buy-in, a talented team of marketers and SEO professionals, and a viable way to track and monitor your results.
Organic search consists of a variety of different techniques, such as keyword research, content optimization and creation, technical audit and offline marketing strategies.
The purpose of organic search is to ensure that the user has a great experience on your website and landing pages, and gets the answer they’re looking for – whether that’s consuming content, comparing two things to each other, or buying a product.
Google doesn’t really care about organic search. What Google cares about is making sure its users find unique, useful and relevant content for what they’re looking for.
If you can match your content to the heart and mind of the user, then you can ensure that Google rewards your efforts and shows your page higher on the SERPs.
There are many different ways you can create a great user experience on your website.
Organic search is divided into three main categories: relevance, discoverability and authority.
These factors can contribute to pages being ranked higher on the SERPs, ideally on one page.
Those who work in SEO must collaborate with a variety of different departments to ensure that you can continue to provide the best user experience to your customers.
SEO professionals must work with the content team to create high-quality content. They also have to work with the development team to make sure their site is technically sound, and, finally, they have to check all these results to make sure what they’re doing is working.
When working with the development team, you need to ensure that the content you create loads quickly and is easily found by search engines and users.
One of the best ways to ensure that this content is found is to link to your relevant content internally. This makes it easier for Google and users to find your content and understand its related content.
Page and site speed is also important to keep in mind, as Google values this as it relates to user experience.
Think about how many times you’ve left a website because it loads slowly – so it’s important to consider this when creating content.
As you can see, many different factors and teams are involved in making sure your website is in good shape, all of which lead to successful SEO efforts.
One of the best ways to get more buy-in around SEO is to show teammates and departments the impact it can have on your business, brand awareness, and online visibility.
Why Organic Search Is Important For Your Business
Organic search is important to your business because your consumer spends a significant amount of time searching for answers to questions or problems on Google.
Currently, there are more than 2 billion searches on Google each year.
In addition, most of your website traffic is from organic search – whether you realize it or not.
With the growth of mobile, every day, Google sees about 15-20% of queries that it has never seen before.
Think about how often you type something into Google on your smartphone, whether it’s to search for an actor’s latest movie, find a new product, search for a location, or type something personal that you don’t want to ask anyone else.
The point is, Google is where your customers go to start their buyer’s journey, so it’s important to make sure you invest in organic search so you can rank on page one for relevant search terms.
The old way of thinking about SEO was to create content and then tell the search team to “go SEO this” article and hope high rankings follow.
Instead, you should invest in search intelligence at the beginning of the content creation process. That way, you can inform the content team what they should include in their content or what content they should create.
If you keep thinking of the SEO team as the janitors of the organization, then your organic traffic will never really increase.
You need to be more proactive with your search data and use that information to drive what you do internally and create an effective SEO strategy and program.
Whether we like it or not, people use search engines for every thing in their daily lives, so we need to start investing more time in SEO just like companies are devoting so much time to paid search.
The Difference Between Paid & Organic Search
The main difference between paid and organic search is that paid search is a pay-to-play traffic source, while organic search is earned by providing the best results for a given search.
Typically, paid search is indicated at the top or bottom of the SERP with an “Ad” tag. Everything found below these paid ads are the organic search results.
Screenshot of Google search for website builder, October 2022
Paid search is a short-term strategy for appearing on search engines because the second you stop paying for ads, you stop appearing.
Organic search is a long-term strategy to appear in search engines because you can consistently rank on page one for years just by making small adjustments to the ranking page.
It’s a much more cost-effective way to get traffic and conversions because you’re not paying every time someone clicks on your ranking content.
Organic search results can be displayed in many ways: standard blue links, answer box results, People Also Ask, location packs, images, videos, etc.
We need to prioritize organic search because the click-through rate (CTR) of organic search results is almost ten times higher than paid search.
Think about how often you skip the commercials on YouTube or fast forward during commercials. Simply by looking at user behavior, we know that paid ads are not the most appropriate place to go to get information.
Users prefer to browse and click on the organic listings because they know this content will have the response they want.
I’m not saying you should avoid paid search altogether, but there should be a healthy balance and synergy between your paid and organic efforts rather than focusing all your resources on the short-term gains provided by paid search.
You can create a highly effective digital marketing strategy by ensuring synergy between the channels.
For example, if there are keywords that you are not ranking for on the first page, you should start increasing your paid spend on these keywords as you work to optimize the related content.
Additionally, assume that there are keywords that you are already ranking for on the first page. In that case, you can lower your paid spend for these phrases – because you don’t need to pay for clicks if you’re already ranking organically at the top of the results.
Some case studies (Disclosure: I work at Conductor) say that appearing in paid and organic listings is better because users remember the brand.
In general, by using the data between the two channels, you can find out and test what is best for your organization.
How To Get Started With Organic Search?
There are many different levers you can pull in SEO to start getting things done.
The way you should think about getting started with SEO is to make sure your website content is relevant and discoverable.
Breaking this down at a high level, you need to create relevant content and ensure that this content is accessible and technically sound.
The Voice Of The Customer
First, you should create content that matches the voice of the consumer. Keyword research is the bread and butter of creating content. It is the first step to take when considering creating a landing page.
If you don’t match your content to the voice of the customer, then no one will find it. By doing keyword research, you can ensure that your high-quality content uses phrases that customers are actually searching for.
Monthly search volume (MSV), or the average amount of people searching for a phrase each month, is an important metric, but it’s also a directional metric.
You need to prioritize the importance of your keyword first and foremost. Otherwise, because the SERP is so competitive, you might be bringing in unqualified traffic or never have the chance to rank.
A Sound Technical Foundation
Second, when creating your content or website, you want to make sure the technical foundation is solid.
From a high level, Google or any other search engine crawler finds your content by crawling all the links on your site and following all the links that are accessible.
Then, search engines start analyzing these links to see what the content is on the page and keep this in the search index.
Finally, when a user searches for something in the search engine, it serves this content to the user and ranks the most relevant landing pages according to what the algorithm thinks will provide the best answer.
This is important because if you make it difficult for Google to find your content, or if you create content that loads really slowly, then Google will not want to show this content to users.
Monitor And Measure Results
Finally, you need to monitor and measure the results of the strategies you implement.
Using enterprise SEO software or a smaller SEO tool, you can keep track of our keyword rankings, market share, and organic traffic to better understand what’s happening and when changes are needed.
Half the story is about researching and implementing the changes. The other half digs into reporting to see what works and what doesn’t.
Conclusion
Organic search is the best way to ensure users find your content. You don’t pay for these clicks; you earn them.
Users understand that the content appearing at the top of search engine results is the most relevant and helpful content for what they are looking for.
By making life easier for Google, you also end up reaping the rewards as your content and website get more organic traffic, conversions and recognition internally.
Becoming more visible organically is no easy feat.
There will always be a lot of trial and error before figuring out what works. However, that’s the best part of SEO – once you find out what works, you can replicate those wins and learnings across the entire site.
SEO is a very fast-paced industry that is always changing.
By staying up-to-date on algorithm updates, new result types and industry trends, you can ensure that your website is always at the top of search results.
Hopefully, this article has provided you with a basic understanding of what organic search is, how to take action, and why it matters to your business. To learn more about SEO and advanced topics, check out SEJ’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO.
Featured image: smunu/Shutterstock
How do websites get organic traffic?
How to Increase Organic Traffic to a Website
- Use long-tail keywords.
- Consider influencer marketing.
- Leverage on-page SEO.
- Find and remove non-working content.
- Become a guest blogger.
- Create video content on YouTube.
- Promote your content on social media.
- Answer questions in Google’s People Also Ask.
What is organic traffic to a website? Organic: Traffic from search engine results that is earned, not paid for. Paid search: Traffic from search engine results that is the result of paid advertising through Google AdWords or another paid search platform. Referral: Traffic that occurs when a user finds you through a website other than a major search engine.
Is SEO organic search?
The term organic SEO means organic search engine optimization. Organic SEO is the practice of using white hat SEO strategies to increase your website traffic and improve your website’s presence in unpaid search engines.
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What is negative SEO?
Negative SEO, also sometimes called “black hat SEO”, involves the use of malicious tactics on your website to tarnish your reputation with Google and steal search engine rankings for important keywords to be used on a competitor’s website.
Is Negative SEO Illegal? Negative SEO is not illegal, but it is highly unethical and something that Google simply will not tolerate. It is therefore a best practice for webmasters to protect their site against negative SEO attacks to prevent unjustified penalties being demanded of them.
Does negative SEO Still Work?
Today, most websites are completely safe from negative SEO attacks. Google has gotten pretty good at catching spam backlink booms, so these types of attacks probably won’t affect your rankings even if they do happen.
Does SEO Still Work 2022?
Will SEO still be relevant in 2022? Yes of course. Although some SEO tactics that were effective in the past have stopped working, SEO has continued to evolve. Constantly reinventing itself to try to better match user intent, cutting out the spammy, ineffective tactics to improve.
Is Negative SEO real?
Remember that negative SEO is real and something you should watch out for, but it’s not something that will undermine or overturn an otherwise powerful strategy.
How does negative SEO work?
Negative SEO, also sometimes called âblack hat SEO,â involves the use of malicious tactics on your website to tarnish your reputation with Google and steal search engine rankings for important keywords to be used on a competitor’s website.
Is SEO paid or organic?
The goal of SEO is to rank your website in the organic search results. You can also get your website in the paid area of the search results by paying per click (PPC). SEO is where you focus 100% on ranking in the organic results.
Is SEO the same as organic search? Organic search traffic comes from people who find business links among search engine results. SEO optimization affects organic search results.
Is SEO paid or unpaid?
Most people search online before buying something, so having a strong presence in search is crucial and using a strategic combination of both can boost your visibility in the long run. SEO is for organic traffic – so that’s free or free listings, and SEM is for targeted ads that you pay for.
What is paid SEO called?
To drive web traffic through search marketing, you can choose between two main categories. Category One: Paid Search, also called search engine marketing (SEM) and pay-per-click (PPC).
What is paid SEO & Organic SEO?
With organic search, companies implement SEO strategies to optimize their website’s visibility and rankings in the search results. On the other hand, paid search involves users paying for optimal placement in the search results. Paid search is also often referred to as paid-per-click advertising or PPC.
What is paid search SEO?
Paid search and SEO. Paid search targets those who search for keywords related to your business through ads on the search results page (SERP). SEO, on the other hand, ensures that your website, content and social profiles are ready to rank well in organic search results.
Is SEO considered organic?
Organic SEO, also called organic search engine optimization, is the process of improving your rankings in unpaid (or organic) search results on search engines such as Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo. Organic SEO tactics include keywords, links, content creation and more.
Is SEO considered organic marketing?
Organic SEO refers to getting natural placement and getting results that are done through various proven strategies like optimizing the web page by writing high quality and highly relevant content, boosting keywords, incorporating meta tags and backlinking.
Why is SEO called organic?
Organic SEO is the practice of using white hat SEO strategies to increase your website traffic and improve your website’s presence in unpaid search engines. The word organic is used to distinguish between natural search engine optimization methods and paid tactics for ranking in SERPs.
Is SEO organic or paid?
While organic search focuses on unpaid rankings in search results, paid search focuses on paid rankings. With organic search, companies use SEO to optimize their website’s visibility or rankings in search results. In comparison, paid search allows users to pay for a prominent place in search results.
Is SEO the same as paid search?
Paid search and SEO. Paid search targets those who search for keywords related to your business through ads on the search results page (SERP). SEO, on the other hand, ensures that your website, content and social profiles are ready to rank well in organic search results.
What is the difference between paid search and SEO?
The most notable difference between SEO and Paid Search is where the results appear on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). The top four paid search results appear right at the top of the SERP, followed by the top ten organic (SEO) results. The end of the page has another selection of paid search results.
What is paid search also known as?
Pay per click, or PPC, is the most widespread paid search model and is often used to refer to paid search in general. As mentioned above, it is actually the same as Cost Per Click (CPC): the advertiser pays the search engine for each click on their ad.
Is SEO organic or paid?
While organic search focuses on unpaid rankings in search results, paid search focuses on paid rankings. With organic search, companies use SEO to optimize their website’s visibility or rankings in search results. In comparison, paid search allows users to pay for a prominent place in search results.
What is the Backlinks in SEO?
A backlink is when one website links to another with anchor text. An example of a backlink is any article you find that links to another source or website. You can find examples of website backlinks all over the internet, especially on popular blog sites that link back to relevant content.
What is the meaning of backlink? A backlink is an external link that leads to a website or web page. The quality of a backlink depends on the online reputation of this website or web page, and its credibility in the eyes of search engines. Backlinks are important criteria for organic ranking (SEO).
Why is it called a backlink?
It’s called a backlink because it’s a link that points back to a website. Backlinks are also known as inbound links or inbound links. The opposite of a backlink would be an outbound link, which is a link that points from your website to another.
What is a backlink and why is it important?
Backlinks are like votes that tell Google that a particular website is trustworthy and the content on the website is valuable, credible and useful. So, the more of these “votes†you have, the higher your website will rank in Google and other search engines.
What is a backlink and how does it work?
A backlink is also known as a hyperlink or inbound link. In SEO, backlinks are the inbound links that refer from other pages on the web to your own web pages. Google treats these backlinks as a âstamp of approvalâ between two websites. The more backlinks a page has, the more likely it will rank at the top in Google.
What is the difference between a link and a backlink?
Backlinks are links from a page on one website to another. If someone links to your site, then you have a backlink from them. If you link to another site, then they have a backlink from you. For example, these words link to YouTube, so they now have a backlink from us.
Which backlink is best for SEO?
As we mentioned before, dofollow backlinks are the most valuable. They are the ones that make a big difference for your SEO. That’s why it’s important to always look for ways to get more dofollow backlinks. There are a number of ways to get dofollow backlinks by creating content.
Are backlinks good for SEO?
Backlinks offer better website SEO because they boost your website’s authority and can help you rank higher for target keywords in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Which is the most powerful backlink?
The most powerful backlinks are dofollow links. Dofollow backlinks are backlinks that pass the SEO juice from the site giving the backlink to the site receiving the backlink.
Which backlink is least important in SEO?
Nofollow backlinks are less common. They are also less valuable. They usually tell search engines to ignore a particular link. Google’s official definition of the nofollow tag is, â’Nofollow’ provides a way for webmasters to tell search engines ‘Do not follow links on this page’ or ‘Do not follow this specific link.
What is backlink and its types?
Different types of backlinks that will boost your SEO. Guest Blog Backlinks. Editorial Backlinks. Relationship-based Backlinks. Acknowledgment Backlinks.
What are the three types of backlinks?
Tier 1 (the best backlinks you can generate for your website) Tier 2 (bad backlinks you should avoid as much as possible) Tier 3 (The absolute worst of the worst. These backlinks would penalize your website by Google and other search engines). )
What is backlinks and how it works?
Backlinks occur when one website links to another website. Also referred to as inbound or inbound links, backlinks make their connection through external websites. These links from external domains point to pages on your own domain.
What is an example of a backlink?
Backlinks are links from a page on one website to another. If someone links to your site, then you have a backlink from them. If you link to another site, then they have a backlink from you. For example, these words link to YouTube, so they now have a backlink from us.