If you operate a business or manage a marketing or sales team, you know that using organic search SEO to improve the exposure of your website may make or break your sales and revenue.
Searchers don’t really go beyond the first page because most people searching online find what they’re looking for right away. As a result, if your website doesn’t rank well, your prospects will have a more difficult time finding you, if at all.
Organic Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important strategy to improve traffic to your site and generate more leads.Â
But, in a world of information saturation, how can you truly differentiate yourself from the competition?
We have created this guide just for you so you can find the answer to that question:
What Is Organic Search?
The unpaid listings that appear on SERPs are known as organic search results. These outcomes are determined by criteria such as relevance to domain authority, the user’s search query, incoming links, and legitimate search engine optimization (SEO). Organic search results are free of advertisements, as opposed to sponsored search results, AKA PPC advertising. Organic search results cannot be purchased by advertisers.
Instead, SEO best tactics are often known as ethical SEO. White Hat SEO, or organic SEO, is intended to increase a website’s SERP position without the website owner having to pay or resort to unethical practices. Techniques such as keyword stuffing, commonly known as unethical SEO, are examples of prohibited methods. Here’s an example:
The placement of a link on SERPs is critical. Organic search results are often only a small fraction of the page, depending on the search query. Because search advertising appears at the top of the search engine results page, the viewable organic search results may consist of only one or two items if a device has a small display, such as a mobile phone, notebook, or tablet.
What Does Organic Search SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Mean?
Organic search engine optimization (organic SEO) is the process of obtaining a high placement (or position) on SERPs in unpaid, algorithm-driven results on a certain search engine. Methods such as keyword optimization, internal linking, backlinking, and creating high-quality content can help your web page rank. Black hat SEO techniques, such as keyword stuffing and link farming, can also help organic SEO. However, stay away from them!
Sites that use organic SEO in its purest form will behave similarly to organisms, growing, expanding, and adapting over time in response to reader desires.
Organic Search SEO Benefits That You Need to Know
Although paid advertising yields immediate results, organic search SEO strategies yield long-term results. Most websites’ first source of visitors is organic search traffic, which can be a critical component of a buyer funnel, leading to increased conversions and return on investment (ROI).
The following characteristics illustrate the significance of SEO organic search:
Offers a Competitive Edge
An organic SEO strategy employs SEO to improve your online presence and visibility for specific keywords, which can provide your small business with a considerable competitive edge. You may outrank your competitors on search engines without having to spend more money on digital advertising tactics, giving you additional opportunities to command authority online and drive visitors to your small business.
It is Cost-EffectiveÂ
While optimizing your small company website and content for SEO to enhance organic traffic takes time and resources, acquiring organic traffic does not necessitate a large financial commitment. Employing an organic plan allows you to develop your small business without always increasing your marketing expenses accordingly. Simply put, if correctly implemented, an organic strategy can deliver a good return on investment (ROI).
Boosts Your Brand Awareness
Organic traffic can boost your company’s brand exposure. This is especially useful if you have a new business. People are more likely to notice your website if they find it organically and consistently. In the long term, customers are more likely to recall your genuine brand story when they require something that you provide.
Establishes Thought Leadership
Organic traffic has the potential to increase brand expertise. When your target audience searches for information on a search engine, they may use various keywords to find what they are looking for.Â
If your website appears in the SERPs for keywords relating to a specific issue, and you have content on your site that’s internally linked, you begin to be viewed as an expert in that area. Websites with strong brand qualities are also more likely to be visited and shared, resulting in increased organic traffic.
Improves Search Engine RankingsÂ
When you rank highly on search engines, your website will be more visible and will receive more traffic. However, having a lot of organic search SEO traffic shows Google that your site is popular, relevant, and of good quality. This can help you reach even higher rankings in search results.
Can Be Highly Targeted
When successful organic search SEO tips are implemented, your small business website can appear when people actively search for your company or keywords related to it. This results in visitors to your website who are already interested in your company. These purchasers are frequently in a “shopper” mood or looking for a solution to their current problem. In either instance, they are usually primed to become a customer.
Delivers Long-Term Results
When you stop paying for paid adverts, the traffic from those campaigns will immediately cease. While it can be extremely successful in certain circumstances, paid advertising can bring scalability and growth issues. Organic search SEO, on the other hand, can improve your search engine position, offering more long-term traffic results. As a result, strong SEO organic search optimization can create sales and money for your small business far into the future.
Organic Search SEO Generates Quality Leads
Organic traffic can generate more leads with a high conversion rate. Organic traffic through SEO is more efficient in attracting leads than email marketing, social media, and sponsored search.
Organic traffic is usually of higher quality than bought traffic because it comes from users who are actively looking for what you have to offer. Because they’re already looking for information about your company, they’re more likely to become customers or clients.
Drives Sustainable Traffic
Organic traffic helps deliver traffic to your website over and over, even if you don’t do anything additional. You can instantly receive paid traffic to your website. Of course, you must conduct thorough paid keyword research and make the appropriate bids. Good organic rankings, on the other hand, can take months, even up to a year.
However, once you’ve achieved those ranks, maintaining them requires less effort than maintaining paid spots. Whereas with sponsored traffic, you must increase your ad expenditure every time you wish to increase visitors.
Boosts a Website’s Click-Through Rates (CTR)
CTR is a metric that determines how frequently individuals who encounter your content in Google’s SERPs click on it. Organic listings have a higher CTR than sponsored listings. A higher CTR indicates that more people are viewing your site, which increases traffic and helps your brand and business.
Divide the number of individuals that click on your listing in the SERPs by the total number of individuals who visit your listing to calculate your CTR.Â
What Types of Organic Search SEO Results Can You Encounter?
When working on organic search marketing SEO, you might come across the following organic search results, so let’s get accustomed to them:
Top stories boxes highlight newly published items on a specific topic. For noteworthy issues, these generally appear in the organic results.
People Also Ask
People also ask (PAA) boxes show typical queries that people also search for. Each question is answered with a short snippet from a relevant online page.
Video Carousels
Video carousels display videos that are relevant to the search query. The entire carousel occupies a single position.
Featured Snippets
Short snippets that address the searcher’s question briefly are featured snippets. They appear towards the top of Google’s organic search results, with the snippet taken from one of the top-ranking results.
Organic Search SEO Strategies
For the purpose of attracting traffic to your website, having your web pages rank highly in Google’s organic search results for significant keywords can be extremely beneficial. Here are some fundamental tactics to help you get started on raising your organic search engine rankings, even if Google is continually changing their search engine algorithm.
Repurpose and Update Your Old Content for a Boost
The freshness of your content is one of Google’s major ranking factors for organic search SEO. The more recent your pages (and the content on them) are, the more likely they are to appear at the top of Google’s SERPs.Â
Analyze your old content and see if it is losing the spark. If your articles are decaying, they won’t help you improve your organic search SEO, and you won’t rank well. You can accomplish this by using Google Search Console to see whether pages have lost hits, impressions, traffic, or ranks. Then, prioritize and begin updating the content or blog posts that are losing the most traffic.
When it comes to updating old content, merely slapping a current date on the post won’t help Google’s algorithm. Significant adjustments must be made to the content, including the headings and keywords, to guarantee that it remains relevant. You can also conduct a fast audit of competitors who have gained ground to determine what topics they are covering that you can incorporate into your material.
Center Your Content Around Target Keyword Research
As you work towards developing an organic search SEO strategy for your website, try to zero in on the best target keywords. You can use tools like Moz, Ahrefs, SEMrush, etc., to plan your keywords and align your content with what your readers are looking for.Â
No matter what tool you use, make sure that you keep the following elements on your radar:
- Primary Keywords: These specific, popular keywords should be your main focus.
- Secondary Keywords: These should be added to the content as subheadings as frequently as possible.
- Supporting Language: This includes lower-level keywords that you can incorporate throughout your content.
When doing keyword research, evaluate whether you can justify developing articles for strong secondary keywords that have significant search traffic around them. When you post articles about a bigger topic and link them to articles about a subtopic — and vice versa — search engines recognize that you know a lot about that keyword, which boosts your chances of ranking for it.
When creating content for SEO organic search, it is natural for you to accidentally cram everything into one piece of content. As a result, you risk overstuffing it with clunky, keyword-heavy material that your readers will find unnatural.
In order to avoid it, we recommend considering long-tail keywords. These lower-volume terms are usually associated with more transaction-focused search intent, making them ideal for content that moves your prospective clients further down the funnel.
Prune the Pages That Don’t Add Value to Your Website’s Organic SERP Ranking
When it comes to content and keeping evergreen, quality trumps quantity. If you have a huge number of web pages that aren’t adding any value for your readers, your organic search ranking can take the brunt of it. Too many pages on your website will slow it down, which is a crucial ranking issue for Google. Furthermore, if the content on web pages overlaps, they can jeopardize your organic search SEO efforts.
But which pages should be removed, you may wonder? Here are a few methods to tell if a webpage on your website has become obsolete:
- Sessions on the page are falling or low.
- The page has an extremely high bounce rate.Â
- There are no backlinks to the page.
- The page has low keyword rankings or ranks for keywords that are unrelated to your target audience.
- The page is outdated and covers a topic that is no longer of interest to your target audience.
After you’ve identified the low-value pages on your website, you need to decide if they need to be eliminated or redirected. You can redirect low-performing stuff to higher-performing pages that cover comparable topics. Otherwise, put it on the chopping block.
Make Your Meta Descriptions Count
The meta description tag is extremely important for organic search optimization. Your meta description is the text that entails the information offered by your content. Plus, it specifies the block of text that appears after your content title in search engine results pages (SERPS). Your article’s meta description, like its title, is inserted in the <head> of every page’s HTML code.
As with the header content, consider what you look for as a reader. What meta-description would entice you to visit the link and learn more?
It’s important to remember that Google regularly rewrites meta descriptions. After assessing the user’s search intent, it does its best to define your content as something they believe users are looking for. Google can take the content from your meta description and update it in a way it believes is more effective.
The meta description does not play a role in the search rankings algorithm. However, it can influence the CTR of your site from the SERPs. So, even if Google ends up altering your meta description, make it as appealing as possible. It’s always worth attempting to get the information you’re looking for out there, plus it’s a chance for free promotion within the search ranks.
Make Your Website Optimized for Mobile
Google first indicated in 2015 that it would use mobile-friendliness as a ranking criterion for organic search SEO. This sparked the infamous “Mobilegeddon,” as companies hurried to optimize their websites for mobile devices. Since then, Google has gradually increased the importance of mobile-friendliness in its ranks; in 2020, it switched to a mobile-first paradigm, which means that its algorithm now prefers mobile performance over desktop performance.
Here are some suggestions for making sure that your website is optimized for mobile:
- Make your call-to-action buttons mobile-friendly.
- Make your pop-ups mobile-friendly.
- Use Google’s mobile-friendly tool to see if your website is optimized or not.
- Test your touch design because fingers come in varied sizes and can easily make wrong taps.
- Compress your images to make them load faster.
- Use mouse tracking tools and heat maps to discover how people interact with your mobile website and make appropriate adjustments.
- Turn on Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).
- Use caching.
Pay Special Attention to Internal Linking
You should do internal linking whenever you can get the chance. Internal linking is one of the simplest yet one of the most effective organic search SEO tips. However, you must make sure that your internal links are relevant and contextual. Google examines every page and looks for links to other articles that are related to the one you’re writing.
Keep the searchers’ intent in mind while linking, especially when selecting anchor text. This implies that instead of phrases like “Read more,” “Related,” and “Read this article,” you should use anchor text that includes the target keyword on which the content is based. This provides search engines with more information about the link’s destination. Here’s an example:
Google does not specify how many external links or internal links should be included, but as a general rule, decide this on the length of your content. The most critical aspect is to ensure that all of your internal links are contextual and relevant. When presenting new concepts to your readers, we suggest employing numerous internal linking strategies for better results. However, your ultimate goal when building links in your content should be to focus on your readers.
Adhere to Google’s E-E-A-T Guidelines
The E-E-A-T algorithm offers useful guidelines for anyone looking to amp up their organic SEO marketing. Originally introduced a few years ago, EEAT is one of the top factors for improving organic search engine marketing and gauging page quality.Â
Let’s take a look at what E-E-A-T means:
- Experience: Google wants to see content that shows that it was written with some extent of experience, for example, the actual use of a service or product, communicating what a customer experienced, or visiting a place in person. In certain cases, the content provided by someone with first-hand, real-life experience on the subject is the most valuable.
- Expertise: Google is looking for websites that exhibit competence in your sector. This is especially true in the medical, pharmaceutical, financial, and legal sectors. You may build expertise in your writing by providing clear, reliable information and citing credible sources.
- Authoritativeness: Demonstrate your authority. Credentials, testimonials, and favorable reviews can all attest to this. This information can be highlighted across your website.Â
- Trustworthiness: Make sure your readers feel safe. It’s critical to have an HTTPS site with an SSL certificate, especially if you accept payments online. According to research, Google prefers secure domains with SSL certificates.Â
Moreover, you can ensure that your organic search marketing SEO is EAT-friendly by sticking to the following practices:
- Pursue high-quality backlinks while avoiding spammy or PBN backlinks.
- If you have a blog, including author bios and any credentials that illustrate the author’s skill will definitely help.
- Make certain that all content related to your readers’ lives (for example, financial advice or medical information) is produced by competent specialists.
- Reduce or eliminate low-quality EEAT material.
- Check that the information on your About Us, Contact Us, Privacy Policy, and Customer Service pages is correct.
 Leverage the Power of Sitemaps and Navigation
The navigation is the best vote you can have for your website for the significance of your content.
Here are some tips for you to make it organic search SEO friendly:
- From your top menu, link to your most important pillar pages. At this stage, you don’t want to give a link to everything, but the key theme pages on your website should.
- Use the words that your reader will understand. Avoid using phrases like “solutions” and “services” if possible. An architect’s website, for example, could have direct links to “kitchen renovation,” “fireplace installation,” and so on.
- Sitemaps, on the contrary, are XML files that inform Google about the content on your website. Once yours is finished, submit it to Google via Google Search Console.Â
As a general organic SEO strategy, make sure your sitemap is well-organized and that Google is aware of it. Google is excellent at indexing pages and detecting internal links, but you need to have your sitemap configured in Search Console at all times. It’s a fantastic resource to have, especially if you need to disavow dangerous backlinks in the future.
Work on Broken Backlinks
Broken backlinks on your web pages can hurt organic search SEO indirectly by affecting page speed, time on the website, bounce rate, and how link juice is passed. Broken links also have a direct impact on organic search SEO rankings by telling Google that your website is out of date. To ensure that broken links aren’t causing problems for your website, you can use a tool like Google Search Console to audit and update them on a regular basis.Â
Moreover, apart from preserving your own broken backlinks, you can use the broken backlinks of other sites to strengthen your backlinking strategy. This outreach method is frequently successful since it is mutually beneficial — the other site can correct a broken link that is affecting their site’s health, while you can gain extra link juice for your own website.Â
Organic Search SEO Types
Let’s take a look at some of the types of organic SEO:
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO entails optimizing website aspects, such as adding keywords to meta descriptions and titles, as well as using the best URL structure. The ultimate goal of on-page SEO is to correctly educate, motivate, and guide your users as they traverse your site.
The main on-page SEO factors include:
- Images
- Content
- Title tag
- Meta description
- Internal linking
- URL structureÂ
Off-Page SEO
Consider off-page SEO to be the internet equivalent of word-of-mouth recommendations. These SEO actions take place outside of your website and inform search engines that your website is reliable and relevant. You can use off-page SEO to increase website traffic, build brand reputation, and increase SERP ranking.
The main Off-page SEO factors (or tactics) include:
- Brand signalsÂ
- Online reviewsÂ
- Backlinks
White Hat SEO
White hat SEO refers to completely legal SEO tactics that pose no risk of being penalized by search engines. These strategies are all legal, and they are excellent if you want long-term, consistent results that will enable you to outrank your competitors.
Here are a few examples that are a part of White hat SEO techniques:
- Citation building
- Mobile optimization
- Organic link building
- Content creation
- On-page SEO
- Keyword research
- Off-page SEO
Black Hat SEO
Black hat SEO covers tactics that Google expressly forbids. These strategies aim to trick search engines into believing your site is more authoritative than it actually is. A good example is purchasing links rather than gaining them organically. Some people set up link farms and sell link bundles to webmasters.
Purchasing links to make Google believe your site is popular may work in the short term, but it may result in Google penalizing your site. Spinning content rather than writing unique content is also considered black hat SEO.
Local SEO
Local SEO is essential if you have a real storefront. Local organic search SEO focuses on regional search results, whereas regular SEO assists on a worldwide or national scale. Localization techniques enable your company to appear in searches for local businesses such as “SEO agencies near me.”
Local SEO methods include including your name, address, and phone number (NAP) on every page of your website. Ensure the accuracy of NAP information in local directories, business listings, and social networks. Update your Google Business Profile.
Technical SEO
The core of your optimization efforts is technical SEO. Important components of technical SEO include website architecture, rendering, crawling, and indexing. When developing a commercial website, many areas of technical SEO are addressed. However, you must constantly monitor your site’s performance and address faults.
You can utilize technical SEO to:
- Make your website mobile-friendly
- Boost page speed
- Fix site errors
- Avoid duplicate content
- Create a site map
What’s the Difference Between Organic Search Engine Marketing and Paid Search Engine Marketing?
Do you want to know the difference between organic search SEO and paid search SEO?Â
Let’s find out:
Organic Search | Paid Search |
 These are unpaid listings on SERPs that appear based  on their relevance to the search query. |  Paid search ads are small sponsored messages that   appear in the top column of a SERP. |
 Doesn’t need any cost to show up in the results but  requires a large amount of work to optimize for organic  SERP ranking. |  They require an investment – generally on a pay-per-click  basis – and need ongoing optimization and ad copy  modifications to be profitable over time |
 Based on relevance to a user’s query. |  Based on the budget of the advertiser. |
 It relies largely on SEO strategies to increase visibility  for specific web pages within SERPs. |  SEO elements are not required because they are displayed  at the top of SERPs irrespective of their quality or   relevance. |
 It has a stronger chance of long-term success because  organic search ranking persists even after paid  advertising programs have ended. |  You must continue to pay for ad space in order for it to  appear in SERPs. |
 Requires time, effort, and patience before results  appear. |  According to the complexity of the campaign, it can  produce immediate results. |
What’s the Difference Between SEO and PPC?
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads are a way to speed up the process of getting visitors. You will be charged each time an individual clicks on the link from the advertisement to your website, as the name implies. It is a good approach to drive traffic to your website in a short period of time to improve your rankings, but you should never rely solely on PPC.
Organic SEO is always effective as long as you are always adding new material to your website and monitoring all of the factors that influence it. PPC is entirely based on your budget; if your allotted funds are depleted, you will no longer receive visitors. On the other hand, there is no limit to the number of individuals who will learn about your brand and visit your website, thanks to SEO.
Google’s Equation With Organic Search SEO
It’s crucial to understand Google and its importance for any organic search SEO strategy.
Google, as a search engine, has a great deal of responsibility. The fundamental purpose of the most popular search engine is to ensure that when a user searches for something, it returns the most informative and beneficial results possible.
Google makes sure that its SERPs contain all-encompassing resources that fit the users’ search intent — the information the user wants when searching online.
Not only that, but Google is also concerned with the experience its users will have on a website. Thus, it considers factors such as the user experience a website delivers, page speed, bounce rate, and dwell time.
All of these site elements have a significant impact on organic search rankings and where your web page appears in SERPs.
Ready to Implement an Organic SEO Strategy? (Conclusion)
Are you ready to start reaping the perks of organic search SEO?Â
We understand if you feel intimidated to take on the challenge after reading our organic search SEO strategies.Â
Don’t stress about it.
Although you can do it on your own, it’s a massive task, which is why we usually recommend outsourcing to an organic SEO company like Globex Outreach.
If you’d like to work with one of the finest organic search SEO businesses, feel free to reach out to us to learn more about our organic SEO services!
We can’t wait to create a bespoke organic search engine marketing campaign for your company!