Organic SEO: The Ultimate Guide for 2023

on Ecommerce • January 16th, 2020

Organic SEO can help a company build brand awareness, rank higher on Google, create quality content, and generate leads online.

As a business owner in today’s digital area, it is imperative to gain website traffic and transform these users into prospective customers. After all, your website serves as a place where your customers can gain knowledge about your brand, products, and services.

But, if you are not receiving more hits and clicks that will help boost your brand, what can you do? Producing relevant content that has informational keywords is a good start. But, you need to have an organized approach.

An effective digital marketing strategy like SEO can help you drive more traffic and convert these visitors into customers. Though there is no exact formula for success, implementing the best SEO techniques can help your website appear higher on relevant search engine results pages.

To help you learn more about Organic SEO, we’ve put together a guide with everything you need to know. This includes the definition of organic SEO and the benefits of obtaining better rankings on Google search.

We’ll also cover tips for implementing organic SEO techniques and discuss the potential cost of search engine optimization.

Want to explore the advantages of working with an organic SEO agency to get more website visitors? Contact us today to find out more about our organic SEO services.

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Page Contents

What is Organic SEO?

Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to the techniques and strategies to keep your rankings high on search engine result pages.

The difference between Organic SEO from other types of SEO strategy is that the high placement comes from unpaid results that are all driven by understanding present algorithms.

In other words, organic SEO allows you to rank higher when people search for your business without having to cover additional costs, aside from your SEO efforts of course.

You can boost organic results by applying techniques like publishing high-quality blog posts, backlinking, and using top keywords.

Some also choose to apply Black Hat strategies like link farming and keyword stuffing to attract organic traffic. But, we will cover this type of marketing and why you should avoid it when trying to appear on relevant searches.

All the pages on your site send countless signals to Google and other search engines. Each one of these signals is an SEO ranking factor. Fortunately, these can be divided into two major groups, which are on-page SEO and off-page SEO.

On-Page SEO

On-page factors include all of the components of your site, including target search terms, all written content, images, and so on. These are directly under your control. But you must apply advanced SEO techniques to ensure that your site is perfectly fine-tuned.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO refers to ranking factors that are located outside of your page. For example, profiles on local business directories and Google Maps review ratings. These are not directly under your control, but you can implement off-page SEO strategies that help you improve factors not located on your site.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is actually a part of on-page search optimization. But, technical factors are so important when calculating search engine rankings that it’s worth highlighting them in their own section.

There are countless elements you need to tweak, so your best bet is to work with an expert that can implement technical organic SEO strategies into your site.

Black Hat vs. White Hat SEO

Google and other platforms have systems in place to prevent the manipulation of SERPs. But, organic search algorithms are always changing, so each update gives unethical marketers the opportunity to temporarily improve rankings.

Because of this, unpaid search engine optimization strategies can be divided into two types, which are black hat and white hat SEO.

In short, white hat organic marketing consists of techniques that are approved by search engines like Google. Black hat techniques, on the other hand, make use of unethical techniques to manipulate rankings.

There are many issues with black hat SEO, but the most important is that its results don’t last.

Search engines are constantly weeding out web pages that manipulate search results and penalizing these by removing them completely.

Comparing Organic SEO and Paid Search Advertising

The most obvious difference between SEO and paid search is that the latter requires you to have a budget just for ads. In other words, you have to pay for either ads or leads when launching paid ads campaigns. Not to mention the time and resources you need to invest in building the ads.

Unlike paid search, organic techniques like SEO don’t require payment for leads or to place your content on search engines. It’s actually possible to get a whole lot of exposure and great leads without having to pay for either individually. You just need to cover the expenses involved in launching an organic campaign.

What Is the Role Of Google For An Organic SEO Campaign?

Before we dive deeper into the world of Organic SEO, it is essential to look at search engines like Google and the role they play in an organic SEO campaign.

Google is the world’s largest search engine. Because of its popularity, it also has an enormous responsibility of ensuring that it can return relevant search results every single time a user enters a query.

Not only this, but Google must be able to deliver the best search results out of the millions of knowledge resources on the internet. It seeks the ability to match the user’s search intent and behavior to the information that they need to find during their queries.

Moreover, Google is also placing a high-quality web page user experience as their top priority. This is why Google also puts these criteria into consideration: dwell time, page speed (sometimes called site speed), and user experience.

  • Dwell Time – The amount of time a user spends on your website.
  • Page Speed – The amount of time it takes for your web page to load.
  • User Experience – The quality experienced by a website user per visit.

These three criteria play a big role in identifying your website’s spot on search engine results pages (SERPs) and on Organic Search Rankings.

How Does Organic SEO Work in Digital Marketing?

The goal of Organic SEO is to create high-quality website content. This will help your company’s website climb high on Google’s ranking system and appear among the top 10 positions in relevant search results.

And as a business owner, you would want your website to get rankings high enough to generate organic search traffic.

Therefore, you must implement a great organic SEO strategy with different techniques that they can combine together for the overall improvement of your web page.

Some key strategies include:

Keyword Research

This involves performing keyword research and identifying search terms to use so that your website will appear at the top of the results page.

This is also combined with researching the target keyword and long-tail keywords that will match your business. The keyword research needs to be conducted using reliable tools that help identify the user intent as well as metrics beyond search volume.

Internal Linking and External Link Building

Besides the appropriate keywords, it’s also important to have a good link-building profile.

First off, you need to create a good internal link profile. This organic SEO strategy involves ensuring that the pages on your site have links that are connected to other pages. When people search and find your site, the internal links should help them access relevant pages easily. This also helps search bots to crawl and index your site’s contents effectively.

Having external links pointing to your site is also essential if you want to rank higher on search engines. This is called link building and it’s just as important as technical SEO or matching the user search intent.

Adding Multimedia

Visitors enjoy browsing through sites that have photos, infographics, videos, and other visual elements. This encourages users to stay longer on your site and entices them to revisit you. Search engines know this, so make sure to include images that help the content and match the search intent.

Content Creation

Your website should not be a vehicle to offer your product or service to your customers. You must also create relevant, relatable, and informative blog posts that will help your Organic Search Campaign.

Adding Alt Tags for Images

As multimedia adds something extra to your content, business owners must also make sure that these images come with descriptive text.

These descriptions embedded in the code will allow Google to understand what the images are about and how valuable they are to the content.

Page Load Time Optimization

Business owners must also ensure that the pages only take two to three pages to completely load. Longer than this will make people leave your site as quickly as they came. Make sure to track your site using Google Analytics as well as external tools, like PageSpeed Insights.

Ease of Use & Graphic Optimization

Your customers hate complications. Therefore, owners should make their website design simple, and easy to use, with valuable information that can be understood quicker.

People search for solutions long before deciding to purchase your products or services. So, craft relevant content, infuse great graphics, and optimize these materials to appear on both regular search results and Google Images results as well.

The Cost of Organic Search Engine Optimization

As we mentioned earlier, you don’t have to pay every search engine in order to appear on their SERPs. So, unlike paid search, there is no direct cost associated with organic promotion approaches.

Now, SEO and similar strategies involve a huge amount of planning, content creation, and optimization. The best way to identify your ideal budget is to review your business goals and finances, then create a plan around these resources.

If you want help creating an organic search engine promotion plan, contact us today and we’ll be glad to help.

Is Organic SEO Still Important For Local Businesses?

Yes, ranking on every relevant search engine query is important for small businesses for a few reasons. Let’s take a look at the most common ones.

Organic SEO Helps You Rank in Every Relevant Search Engine Results Page

Although technology keeps changing, there’s no denying that organic strategies can still deliver relevant traffic to a business website.

Based on reports by BrightEdge, Organic SEO campaigns have generated more traffic in comparison to social media marketing, email marketing, and paid search ads.

With Organic SEO, You Have Control

In recent years, social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have been generating traffic as well. Indeed, these tech giants can make a marketer’s dream come true.

However, when you solely depend on social media platforms for your site’s organic search traffic, you are under that company’s mercy. While every search engine is technically a private company, the nature of these platforms makes them easier to project than social platforms.

Organic SEO Can Give Your Site Some Stickiness

Though paid ads and social media can give you lots of traffic, it’s difficult to cultivate loyalty through paid search campaigns.

You must be ready for high bounce rates. Bounce rates mean the number of visitors you close and leave your site after spending seconds on a single page.

Social media is perfect for brand awareness and paid search can get you, clients, fast, but if you want to be remembered, Organic SEO is what you should go for.

5 Reasons Why Organic SEO Is Beneficial

Here are five benefits of using an Organic SEO campaign for your brand and business.

1. Organic Search Engine Marketing is Cost-Effective

If you implement the principles of Organic SEO, the cost per click on the search result page is actually zero. This will give your company a competitive edge against your competitors who are trapped in the expenses for PPC ads.

Now, you still need to invest in creating an organic SEO strategy to improve your search rankings. Plus, you have to create relevant content and optimize your page to get good positioning on organic search results.

2. It’s Possible to Get High-Quality Targeted Traffic

By using Organic SEO, users and prospective customers that you can bring to your website are the ones that are actively interested in what you have to offer.

These are the people who enter keywords that are relevant to your industry into their collective search bar. Even if these were informational keywords, it’s a good sign they could become customers later on.

3. And Also to Achieve Long-Term Results

As long as you use ethical Organic SEO tools, your website has opened to the opportunity of achieving a long-term high ranking on search engines. This is unlike the PPC ads where the results you get will end as soon as your payment stops.

The SEO industry is built on sustainable success because it focuses heavily on the user experience. And, on that note…

4. SEO Delivers Enhanced User Experience

Following Organic SEO principles means making sure that your website can offer valuable content through optimized blog posts. Because of this, site visitors will get a pleasant experience with the information and comfort that you provide.

Getting on top of search results is a great first step, but if you also make your site layout easy to navigate, even with mobile users, the combined effort can produce higher engagement rates on your website which will further your site ranking much more.

5. Organic Marketing Allows for Active Marketing Integration

Internet users have unpredictable behavior. Some people prefer to use search engines to look for what they need, while some are easily attracted by paid ads. This is the reason why organic search results vary so much.

The great thing about Organic search engine optimization is that it can integrate well should you have other online marketing techniques. This will make your investments much more worth it and can make your digital marketing approach more coherent.

The Basic Steps In Perfecting A High-Quality Organic SEO Strategy

1. Analyze the Wants of Your Customers

First, you should figure out and identify the keywords or the most common set of words and long-tail keywords (phrases) that consumers use to search when they are out looking for a product or service like yours.

Come up with a list of keywords and begin your thorough thinking. Try to make a spreadsheet, where you would consider all of the possible keywords that you might use.

Also, brainstorm on these things: what are the most popular products or services that you can offer? What are the basic human needs that your business can address?

Think about all the possible diverse terms that can envelop the behavior of your target consumers.

You can also browse the current data on Google when you type in the keywords that you consider.

2. Complete Diverse and Absolute Target Keyword Research

Look at the monthly search volume of searches for the specific keyword you are interested in.

This can be done through a Google Ads account, with the feature Keyword Planner.

Other sites can give the numbers for this.

If the keyword has a high number of monthly searches, this is something you should reference on your site.

However, you must not forget that you might have fiercer competition with the keywords that achieve higher results.

Check on Keyword Difficulty.

This is defined as a number that lets the site owner know how difficult ranking can be for the keyword.

This can be done through keyword difficulty services offered by several online resources and websites.

Make sure to record the numbers in your master file spreadsheet to come back on them later.

Research the competition.

The ideal keyword to use is low keyword difficulty and high monthly search values.

3. Apply the Principles of a Localized Keyword Search

Search engines offer different types of results depending on the locality.

This is why many people do specific searches on keywords + locations within their area. For instance, instead of searching “Veterinary Clinics,” it is better to type ” Veterinary Clinic Miami” if that is where you are located.

It is better to set up a Google My Business page to help your business appear in local searches. You just have to present a physical address.

4. Observe And Examine Your Competition

Once you have chosen a set of keywords, try searching what companies come up with.

Look at the articles on the website and see how they use their keywords.

You should also note the page authority (PA) and domain authority (DA). These are numbers that can dictate how strong the company’s website is. This can be determined by factors like how old your site is and how many links on the internet lead to your website.

This is why it is better to keep an old domain instead of buying a new site. You can revamp your website by redesigning your layout instead.

Your website’s popularity can increase based on the number of backlinks redirected to your site. This is because links like this, especially from sites with authority, can show that your brand is trustworthy.

5. Implement the Keywords in the Copy of Your Site

Once the set of keywords has been established, decide on the pages of your website that you plan to optimize for ranking high in search engine results.

Usually, the first page to focus on is your homepage. Make sure that this page is equipped enough to contain a robust set of information about your company and the list of products and services that you offer.

You can also upload a few informative pages that you think will be more helpful to your customers.

Check on how many times a keyword appears on your competitor’s website and match that.

A good rule of thumb in the use of keywords that you are trying to rank is to apply them at least 5 times per page.

You should not practice keyword stuffing. This means that keywords must not be installed in places where the words will not make sense.

Make sure that the content on your website, including blogs, is not forced and flows naturally when the keywords are mixed in.

  1. Update the HTML Codes On Your Website.

Do a good overhaul of your website’s use of HTML tags

When writing metadata, URLs, H1, and H2, title tags, try to squeeze in the relevant keywords in there. This is because the search engines will sweep through these tag codes when finding the pertinent web pages for a query.

H1 tags are used for main titles, and they are usually bold and enormous on web pages.

H2 tags are secondary titles that are used for clarifications, and emphasis, and as titles for other sections in the websites.

Meta Descriptions are brief summaries of the pages of your website. Keywords are often squeezed in here as well as a teaser to draw them into clicking your page.

  1. Establish Your Website’s Link Building

Links hold a unique role in Organic SEO. Scattering your content, whether within your site or outside of your website will help your strategy.

First, there are inbound links, which keep viewers exploring your website. This is usable for blog posts, which can be linked to product pages or contact pages, for instance.

Backlinks are a little harder to acquire, as you will be needing other websites to publish content that will link back to your site. Some spend a lot on this, but you can gain backlinks by building relationships with bloggers and site owners, too.

Make sure that the links that you use have a persuasive anchor text. It must convince your site visitors to click on the link to get redirected to you

  1. Write Blog Posts for Your Website

    Content marketing is a reliable way to push organic traffic to your website. You can do this by writing timely, relevant, and valuable blog posts.

You can write about your industry, helpful tips, and things that will make you sound like an expert.

A well-written blog post boosts credibility and serves as a perfect vehicle to shower your keywords and links into.

  1. Monitor Your Website Rankings

To make sure that all your efforts are working, you should track how your keywords rank.

Find a keyword-tracking tool that can help you monitor your SEO performance.

  1. Do Not Do It Alone

If you are new to Organic SEO, it helps to consult with the experts.

As learning about this technology can take time, you can opt for hiring an SEO consultant or a company so that you can save time and effort.

Major Challenges Organic SEO Marketers Must Overcome

Two major issues that marketers must overcome are adjusting their content to user questions and overall fluctuating search behaviors.

These are two solutions Google can provide:

  • Google Has Created Answer Boxes – These answer boxes hinder the click-through, and they provide an entire space that shows the full answer to a user’s question, taken from your site.
  • Google and Your Target Market are Dynamically Changing – This is one thing that you cannot ignore. Businesses are opening up daily, technologies evolve, and search engines quickly change their algorithms.

Additional Tips That Will Help You Generate High Traffic While Using SEO Tools

Moving from paid search to organic channels? Here are a few tips to help you hit the ground running.

  • Monitor mentions of your brand. – You can use tools like BuzzSumo to help you get alerts with your brand name or your keywords.
  • Boost and reinvent your content with lower keyword rankings.
  • Know the questions asked by your target consumer and find ways to be able to address that. – One resource to use is Quora.
  • If you upload videos, transcribe the entire video content. This can help you be searchable through Google.
  • Find top publications to write for and blogs to write a guest post in.

Conclusion

Organic SEO is genuinely something that can boost sales of local businesses, as long as you practice it right. The benefits you can get from this marketing strategy can bring long-term and sustainable growth and help you find your place in your chosen industry.

Keith Eneix

My brother Neil and I founded Fannit in 2010 and set out to help entrepreneurs just like us achieve their dreams of being successful business owners. It’s been a rewarding journey for us, and we love every day of it. Inside of Fannit, I work with both our internal team and our clients to make sure that we have everybody working the right roles and we’re being as efficient as possible as a team. I’m always happy to step in whenever there is a difficult SEO challenge at hand... it’s the element of marketing that I’m most passionate about. We’re all here to get better and grow, and that’s what gets me up in the morning! Connect with me on LinkedIn >