Finding yourself on the first page of the Google search results can be exhilarating. Except, in most cases, a first-page rank comes after months of polishing and repolishing search engine optimization signals for Google. It is true even for Bing users. The first-page mention for highly competitive businesses does not happen by accident. It takes weeks of dedication, experimentation, sleepless nights and caffeine-powered ideas to crawl up there from the bottom.
That makes a significant population of entrepreneurs and brand managers wonder if SEO is always so intricate. If establishing search engine-friendly signals on your website is so technical, how is there anything organic about these strategies? Do all contemporary brands engage in some form of SEO or do some of them adhere to their first-page ranks by dint of their enormous popularity? These are just questions that may spring up from time to time among marketing groups. As a leader, it is your responsibility to find out what are the best practices of SEO your brand can enjoy.
How to start working on your organic SEO?
That brings us to the topic of organic SEO. It is the ubiquitous content and signals that all websites must possess to become visible to all website crawlers. There are several time-tested ways of perfecting your organic SEO, and these include –
- Optimization of the website content for search engines via keyword research, topic research and excellent writing skill.
- Enriching website links (inbound and outbound) and investing in internal linking to increase the time users spend on the website.
- Header, meta tag, title tag and SEO tag optimization for the search engines and the potential users, who can understand what the page is about from the meta description on the SERP.
What are the advantages of organic SEO?
Unlike the more technical aspects of paid advertising, PPC and CPC, organic SEO depends on the relevance of the content that the websites offer. Currently, organic search rules over all other forms of web traffic. All kinds of organic searches send about 51% of the net traffic from search engines directly to the B2B and B2C platforms. Therefore, visitors often find exactly what they are looking for on these web pages. Going organic has several pros, including the following –
- You will enjoy a much higher relevant traffic. That will boost your CTR (click-through rate) and conversion rate at one go. When people are satisfied with the information on a page, they are more likely to spend more time there and click on the CTA (Call-to-Action) on the webpage.
- Another advantage is the powerful impact on overall ranking. Due to the increased relevance, your website is more likely to make it to the top and stay there longer than it used to after sponsor boosting.
- Most importantly, organic SEO is significantly less costly than its paid advertising counterparts. Thus, even new brands and small online businesses can engage in the organic optimization of their sites for human users and the search engines.
Why is organic SEO still relevant in 2018?
Investing in organic SEO is not optional for online businesses. You have to tweak your site SEO for it to be accessible for users. Additionally, the user interface of your site, the security (HTTPS certification) and navigation options actively contribute to the user-friendliness of it. According to the most recent significant algorithm changes, there is nothing more Google values than user satisfaction. Therefore, each aspect of website navigation that can contribute to your user experience will determine the level of SEO.
Because social media advertising and traffic are erratic
Boosting social media traffic is never the same as enjoying organic traffic. Think of working on any social media platform as working on a walled garden. It is a closed system, where you have no control over the distribution of resources across the whole network. You might have invested a hundred dollars on Facebook advertising this week, but you have no way of knowing how the Facebook admins are utilizing this for the benefit of your post. The changing trends of social media provide no comfort to advertisers. You have to rely on the individual platform for every boost and diversion.
However, when you are optimizing your content for Google, you are dealing with a more predictable system. Google does roll out over 600 small and large updates throughout the year but working with an experienced SEO team can always help you fix the issues with visibility and traffic. Additionally, working with Google keeps the process more transparent than most paid advertising media. It is much easier to work with Google’s algorithm changes than to deal with plummeting CTRs on paid platforms.
The type of traffic matters
Another reason for this is the nature of the traffic each platform sends. Facebook provides a footfall that is interested in following a story or reading an article. Social media sites can boost CTR, but they hardly give an overall increase in traffic quality or conversion rate. From our experience, you might be investing 70% of your advertising and marketing resources on social media, but Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram won’t give you the same rates of conversion as Google organic traffic promises.
It is essential to pay attention to your visitors
Organic SEO has changed in form over the last couple of decades. In the past, there was no distinction between black hat techniques and white hat measures. Even respun content with unnecessarily high keyword densities could outperform carefully constructed reader-friendly content on the web. Google and the other search engines had no way of detecting SEO malpractices or to tell them apart from sound strategies.
However, things began to change after the introduction of the Google Panda and Penguin updates. Google became more aware of the difference in signals between black hat and white hat content. After the Hummingbird update, the search engine became smart enough to understand keyword intent, synonymous usage, and content targeting. With the release of the RankBrain update, the world of content became significantly more user-friendly than it was before. Even a couple of years ago, it was the era of the machine. Right now, Google has ensured that human users remain the top priority of all websites.
Organic SEO is not tricky. It requires experience and expertise, but even a non-residential SEO team can make your site visible to the target users at a fraction of a new brand’s average sponsored content budget.
