When you hear the term organic search, you might instantly think of organic food at a grocery store. But, will an organic search make your business much healthier? That’s what every online business and research seems to correlate.
If you’re wondering what it all means, organic search takes place when a search returns results based on indexed pages measured by content and keyword relevancy. The reason for the name organic is because it is deemed a natural search and not one such as paid advertising. The search engine visits your site, collects information and indexes web pages in the building of a vast database. Based on a person’s query, it delivers the best search results in list form.
At the heart of gaining significant organic search results are excellent and honest search engine optimization practices. This includes not just relevant backlinking, but also aspects such as keywords, key phrases and header information to increase the ranking of your site, which in turn can improve your site’s position in the organic search results.
As the king of search indexing, Google champions the virtues of a natural or organic search. Google’s objective is to continue to improve its methods about returning fast, highly relevant results based on page content, relevancy of links pointing to that page and other objective criteria that Google does not always share. You’ll notice when you perform a search, you’ll see a clear separation between sponsored listings and the organic search results. Below, we discuss how to engage in organic research to help boost your overall rankings.
Advertising and consumers
You probably aren’t shocked to find out that consumers believe and trust recommendations from personal acquaintances or online reviews much more than paid advertising. In fact, according to a Nielsen Insights’ survey, 90 percent of the respondents said they trusted recommendations from people they know, and 70 percent trusted consumer opinions posted online. In stark contrast, only 41 percent trusted online ads.
And, a Lab 42 study conveyed that only 3 percent of their participants said that sponsored posts on social media encouraged them to try a new product. These results are staggering and should undoubtedly push you to reevaluate your current advertising strategy. Long gone are the days when sponsored posts attracted significant numbers. Consumers can already see right through them as another attempt to sell them something.
What it means to be at the top of the organic search listings
According to an online ad network, Chitika, it should not be a surprise that the top listing of Google’s organic search results receives more than 33 percent of the traffic. And, the second position receives 18 percent of the traffic. Chitika also goes on to state, “While being the number one result on a Google search results page is important, these numbers show just how significant the advantage that websites of this type have over any competitors. The impact of SEO for online business is seemingly quantified by the latest statistics, which are not likely to change significantly.”
Also, there was a significant drop in traffic from Page 1 to Page 2 results. To illustrate, Page 1 results received 92 percent of all traffic, and the traffic dropped off by 95 percent for Page 2. Moreover, it should be worth noting that regardless of what page you’re on, the top position continuously sees more traffic than any other position on the page.
Benefits
There is no question that making it to the top of the organic search listings comes with a wide variety of advantages. First of all, you will have a higher click-through rate. This is because, as stated before, most consumers prefer organic search results. Also, due to the contextual nature of organic search, these types of listings can be more relevant and offer an abundant depth of choices. It is the organic search results that will yield an improved click-through rate, in addition to maximizing the traffic to your site as you move closer to the top.
Secondly, it does not matter whether or not you are a small or large business. Organic search listings treat every site the same because the queries are responded to with the most relevant results. So, you can exude a big company impression if your brand is at the top of the search results page. This is critical especially when competing with your larger rivals.
Thirdly, you can use it to build trust. Most adults are skeptical when it comes to advertising because they know that they are commercially motivated and not always the most relevant solution for their needs. They also realize that companies with the most money can purchase the most significant amount of advertising. While some of the larger companies may produce the best products, this is not always necessarily the case. As a result, you will see more visitors from organic search converting to sales (as long as your rankings are for targeted and relevant keywords).
Last but not least, boosting your organic search results can cost significantly less than spending a large portion of your budget on paid advertising whether it be online, through television and print media. And, you can reach levels that were only previously reserved for those with predominantly deep pockets.
Organic linking
An organic link is a link from someone else’s site, where they link to your site without being asked to do so. This is a compliment because they felt your content was so great that it was worth sharing with their readers and followers. Since the majority of consumers trust online reviews, organic links are beneficial because:
- They drive targeted traffic to your site
- Search engine bots may increase your ranking based on good reviews of your site
- It improves your authority within your field/niche
- When you grow the organic links you get from trusted sites; it elevates your ranking as a trusted site
To get more organic links, you want to start with providing excellent content; this means at least 50 pages with unique content. Plus, remove all duplicated content. You want to be the resource in your niche that people consider an expert. Furthermore, it’s essential to participate in communities related to your niche or where your target audience can be found. However, you must be part of the community and make conversations; you don’t want to come across as somebody who is only there for the potential profit.
Also, make it easy to link to you. This can be with providing a ‘link to me’ page or implement social networking icons that make it easy for people to quickly share any of your posts on their favorite social networking sites. And, on top of all that, offer facts that are not always very well known, write about newsworthy items, post videos and provide useful products or services relevant to your user base.
Research
Since keywords are critical, you want to find out how many links you need and know-how much it will cost to surpass your competition. You can use any number of free SEO cost calculator tools. This step is significant because it let you choose the right keywords for you can afford to succeed.
You also want to have a specific and straightforward link building plan. But, because the goal is to look natural, you need to perform your link building slowly and steadily. This means building no more than five links per day.
After that, you want your backlinks to have a wide variety of unique anchor texts and keywords. Twenty-five percent of your anchors should include the URL of your website, and 25 percent should consist of your brand name or domain name. Not to mention, you should use different keywords in each link building campaign.
Organic research is a must for improving your search rankings. Nonetheless, you need to understand that it takes patience. The traffic will come as your site improves its organic search results rankings. You should also stick to your plan until it is fully implemented. Also, you want to track your changes throughout the first 100-200 results continually. This way, you will soon see your organic search ranking dreams come to fruition.