The Complete Guide to Organic Search

If everything in a grocery store was thrown in front of you without any reason, naturally one would get overwhelmed. The solution? Separate everything into a specific aisle and section, with items sorted by brand and popularity.

Similarly, if google threw a million irrelevant pages at you every time you looked up ‘best places to eat in New York, we would end up wasting way too much of our valuable time. Instead, you get a curated set of pages ranked by relevancy.

Now to stand out amongst a sea of millions, you can go one of two ways; organic search or paid advertisement. If you ask us, organic search is the smart option you are going to want to look into and we will explain why.

What is Organic search and its importance?

Organic searches are any search results listed below the paid advertisement of any given topic searched on said search engine. The sites listed are usually ranked by relevancy to the searched topic and sustain no effect by any advertisement company tossing their money at them. Several factors may affect the page rank of your site, here are a few major ones:

• Search query: what is the nature of your searched topic? How many specific keywords are utilized?
• User intent: what form of information you are searching for? Articles, news, photos, and videos?
• Context: Your relative location may change the nature of your results entirely. If you are to search for “best sports moments “in England, you will get results on their cricket world cup win whereas in America you may get football and basketball-related results.
• Content length: observation shows that content in the top 5 positions is usually 45% longer than those in lower positions.
• Keyword density: how many relevant keywords have you used in your title and body? How precise was your keyword research?
• Bounce rate: Domains found in the top positions have a 49% or higher bounce rate than others.

Also, your overall search history has a great impact on the organic search rank of sites shown to that user. Crafted specifically according to your interests to provide a completely customized experience for the user and persuade them to drop some dollars on their desired items.

Targeting the root and then working from there will prove to be significantly more beneficial and sustainable long term. Certainly seems superior to the temporary results obtained by hurling money towards paid advertisement.

The competition for the top search positions is intense, to say the least. Nowadays, you cannot just keep all your eggs in one basket. Anyone who wishes to be successful on the internet long-term needs to keep up with the ever-changing algorithms smartly as it affects the organic search space, completely rendering it from time to time.

What is better? Paid search vs Organic search:

Anyone who owns or has just initiated a new business will know that you do not always have money to throw into the wind hoping it sticks somewhere. A responsible business owner will know not to put all your eggs in one basket and will take time to discover the intricate details of the online realm of digital marketing.

Investing only in paid advertisements is like shooting and thinking all your shots are guaranteed to land. Such an online marketing strategy is too high a risk with no guaranteed reward.

While paid ads do appear on the top of the search results, you can expect advertisers to pay a few cents per click to several hundred dollars depending on industry competition. Advertising companies also have complete control over who is shown their ad and when meaning you will get to see immediate traffic on your site. It can be a good temporary solution in competitive markets. PPC campaign statistics are easier to measure than SEO statistics, it can help you a good understanding of where your ROI stands.

Organic search on the other hand yields more long-term results as compared to instant spiking numbers. It is one of the main sources of traffic that inbound marketers focus on and rightfully so. You receive relevant traffic and answer user questions along the way. Using software like google analytics or HubSpot can easily help you track your SEO statistics as well.

The sweet spot is when you find the perfect balance between a paid advertisement and organic growth. Analyze the current needs of your business and find the ratio of paid to organic marketing that will work for your specific digital markets requirements. PPC campaigns yield unbelievable results when paired with an already SEO-friendly page.

There are several types of organic search strategies you can pair with PPC campaigns to get traffic from both ends.

Organic search rank and SEO

You could be selling the best products money can buy in the market or be writing the most unique articles and blogs, but simultaneously be getting little to no actual traffic on your site. All that hard work will equate to nothing if you are not able to drive any organic traffic to your page, this is where you need to take a step back and consider utilizing various types of SEO techniques.

On-page SEO

Helps optimize each page on your site. It encourages search engines to recognize the content you have created as valuable to the searcher’s intent.

Keyword research and optimization are essential in such cases. That paired with high-quality content is a recipe for landing yourself higher on the organic search rank of your website. Featured snippets highlight the keywords you used and persuade the user to click on your site.

Video carousels are also a way to optimize your screen real-estate. It allows you to combine multiple images or videos into one single ad, thus giving the user an additional visual form of information other than your written body of work. It is great for retaining user attention and engaging them with your site.

It is also essential to keep the information on your site up to date. Keeping up with the top stories and editing your content according to that is a great way to bank on increased user traffic on that said topic, a commendable business strategy if executed well.

Technical SEO

This kind of SEO is related to non-content-related elements of your site. This is often a type that people overlook but what they do not realize is that technical SEO can be the frosting on the cake for your site. It is what separates your website from the sea of others in the market and breathes new air into it.

Ever heard of the phrase, ‘you eat with your eyes first? it implies that we by nature are drawn to visually appealing things. This same idea can be molded and applied to the realm of online marketing. Your site architecture is a huge determining factor for user retention and engagement. This includes the way you structure your data to how well your visual elements relate to your content. It is also directly interlaced with the mobile-friendliness of your site. An organized and aesthetically pleasing website will encourage the user to go through other pages on there as well. No one wants to click on a website and not understand how to navigate it because the text is small or they cannot zoom into the pictures.

Publishing share-worthy content is key to naturally bringing more users to the site without even trying. The devil is in the details, do not expect the online world to be forgiving when it comes to such things.

Websites need to be indexed similar to how it is with books. Your page will only be discoverable on search engines if your site can be indexed. If you have decided to block a certain portion of your site from web crawlers, know that those pages will not be discoverable in organic search.

You may connect the google search console to your site and analyze the coverage tab to keep check of what is being indexed and what is not.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO is what strengthens the reliability of your website. Consider it similar to the walls of a fortress protecting the contents inside. This enables your website to build a name and authority for itself. Algorithms will pick that up and mark your website to be an ideal search result as it is reliable, reputable, and a trusted source of information.

You will need to build high-quality backlinks from reputable websites and a large volume of links at that so that search engines may see that your site is valuable and established. This also builds a level of trust between you and the competitors in the market while also benefiting from it and increasing your organic search rank.

The last thing a user wants is to click on a sketchy-looking website that might do them more harm than good. If other sites include your page or brand on their pages, this will be picked up by the algorithm and rewarded by aiding you to secure a better position when it comes to organic search results.

Research for yourself and build an online network of connections similar to how we do in real life. You can consider using link-building plans and backlink checkers to get an analysis of how you can build links on the same sites.

All these three types of SEO work hand in hand with each other, prioritizing one over the other will most not give you long-term results. Although if you manage to find the golden ratio of SEO strategies, there is little to nothing stopping you from dominating whatever online market there is.

Constantly ensure to keep track of the statistics of all three categories to see if any tweaking is needed. This is never a one-and-done answer, the one who keeps a close eye on the tiny changes is the one seeing significant progress later.

Strategies to make the most out of organic search

So we have discussed the SEO types and their importance in detail, now we move on to several other niche things to understand and implement to increase your organic search and page ranking.

Create a catching meta description

This is the little non-clickable description that shows up under the title. It gives the user the first little glimmer of what kind of content your page is providing.

Ideally, you will want your description to be enriched with popular keywords related to the search query at hand so your objective is instantly clear.

Keep your meta descriptions short and snappy that can be easily scan-able, users do not pay attention to every single word so make sure to make them few but impactful.

Treat it like a little ad for your page, paint it with your colors to make it unique to you and stand out.

Keep a precise but engaging title

We do not want to be so over the top with our titles that the seriousness of our article or page is questioned unless that is what you are going for.

Construct the main title of your target page to be punchy in the best way possible, a great idea is to keep it updated with the current years’ date for example ‘ 10 best places to eat in 2021 ‘.

This way your page will stay relevant even as time goes by.

Future of Organic Search

With the constantly changing algorithms, it can be rather difficult to maintain the speed at which the digital marketing space operates. That being said, it also gives an even playing field to anyone who wishes to start up something new.

Money is not everything when it comes to optimizing your page ranking, so get to research and see the results for yourself.