Table of Contents
What is organic SEO?
Organic search engine optimization refers to online methods or strategies employed in order to boost website visibility or rank higher In an unpaid, algorithm-driven search engine results page.
Organic SEO contains a variety of activities or methods which includes keyword research, link building, quality content, mobile optimization, and many more.
The word organic is derived from the word organism (a biological term), And has been defined as a living thing that has an organized structure, can react to stimuli, reproduce growth, and most importantly adopt and maintain homeostasis. Relating this to SEO, your SEO-optimized website must be well structured, organized, be mobile responsive, and most importantly must be able to adapt to changes in the search engine algorithm.
Why is organic SEO important?
Organic SEO is very important because if done properly it will contribute to the success and growth of your business by driving targeted traffic and potential leads to your website. Research has it that 93% of online experience begins with a search on search engines such as google.
If your website is not ranking on the organic search result pages, you’re losing out on a whole lot of money, and business growth opportunities.
For several reasons, organic SEO is very crucial to your online success and some of these reasons are;
- Increase Visibility: there are over 4.6 billion active internet users in the world, and the search engine is one of the major channels they go to when they need information about a new product or service. For this reason, every business with a growth mindset need not be advised before positioning themselves on the search engines for better visibility.
- Better Cost-Effectiveness: One of the greatest features of organic SEO is that it is a plain and level playground for all irrespective of your marketing budget. Other marketing methods such as paid ads, can be easily manipulated by the big guys with deep pockets, but in SEO, is a leveled ground, cause their ads budget has little or no effect in the organic SEO field.
- Increased Brand Awareness and Value Over Time: organic SEO is a very good way to put your brand in the faces of your prospective customers. One big advantage it has over paid ads is the fact that you mostly stop getting results once your paid ads end, but for organic SEO, you will keep getting results as long as your content is valuable and relevant. With little maintenance over time, your organic SEO practices will still yield great results.
How Does Organic SEO Work?
The results displayed on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) are not displayed through random probability or some sort of luck. Search engines engage a complex algorithm system to determine which search results will best answer the search engine user’s query.
Search engines engage web crawlers to crawl the internet for millions of web pages and decide which is best to display for their users based on some criteria such as content relevancy, mobile responsiveness, and many more. A search engine crawler will also gather further information about other content other than text, this includes images, infographics, and the likes.
Basically, organic SEO engages white hat SEO methods to improve the website’s visibility and improve ranking. This includes the use of methods or actions that are compliant with search engine guidelines to improve the website’s visibility. Most of these practices of organic SEO are tailored towards giving website visitors a better user experience, offering value to readers without cutting corners or engaging in practices that are meant to trick the search engines or the users. Some of the practices involved in organic SEO are;
Keyword Research
This involves the use of some SEO tools to research, find and analyze keywords that are relevant and valuable for your website to rank for.
Relevant, quality, and optimized Content Creation
this is the creation of SEO-optimized web content that is relevant to the keyword being ranked for, and at the same time fulfilling the readers’ needs or desires.
Industry Outreach: (Also Known as Link Building):
This involves reaching out to other industry experts in your niche and offering their audience value. This way you are building Expertise and Authority for your business and websites. This can be done in several ways which include a podcast, guest posting, and many more. This industry expert might in turn mention you later in their blog post and link to your website if you offer something valuable to their audience. This leads to link building to your webpages. Link building can as well be internal linking from one relevant article to another.
Optimizing page loading Speed
This includes practices that will enable your webpage to load faster so as to enhance user experience as this is a great factor that can make or mar your organic SEO goals.
Adding Image Alts
This is the addition of relevant image SEO titles to images in an SEO-optimized content. This practice is very important as it boosts the chances of getting such content ranked.
Using Header Tags
using SEO keyword optimized tags is very essential as it helps the search engine crawler to understand how your website is structured, improves content readability and user experience.
How Much Does Organic SEO Cost?
Organic SEO costs cannot be given precisely like that of paid ads. It’s certain that organic SEO only cost a fraction of what paid Ads cost, and its cost can be accounted for in terms of the following
- Cost of getting high-quality and relevant SEO optimized content
- Cost of the SEO tools employed (keyword analysis and SEO plugins)
- Cost expended in reaching out to other websites for link building (Note that this is not a direct cost paid to the web owners as google is against this, but the cost of you or your employee spending time reaching out to the website owner and posting relevant and valuable content on their websites.)
What are Organic SEO Skills?
If you are looking to build a career in SEO, or your organization wants to hire an organic SEO specialist, there are certain skills to look out for;
- SEO technical know-how: this is the basic understanding of what organic SEO is, how it’s done, the DO’s and Don’ts of the game, search engine guidelines, and many more. Understanding Key Performance Indicators and analyzing them.
- Strategic Planning and execution: planning and execution is a very important skills. This is needed to plan a lot of SEO-related activities such as content creation and publishing, planning SEO campaigns, keyword planning, and all.
- Good communication skills: this is an essential skill to communicate with other members of the marketing team so as to carry them along, and make them understand the SEO goals and how they can contribute their quota to the success of these goals, good communication skills to reach out to other website owners for guest posting, industry outreach, and other useful collaborations.
- Patient: SEO is a long-term game, results are not instant and are only ideal with people who can exercise delayed gratifications.
- Content creation knowledge or outsourcing: Your SEO specialist might not be the one to create the content, but the ability to go through SEO writers’ profiles and decide which is best in terms of value, optimized content, and other services is highly essential.
- Organic SEO tools technical know-how: Organic SEO cannot be done successfully without the use of some SEO tools. This could be various tools such as keyword research tools for researching and analyzing keywords, SEO plugins to read and analyze website stats, and many more.
I hope this piece gives you a better understanding of what organic SEO is. For a better understanding of SEO and a more in-depth analysis of how to do SEO the right way, read through our beginners’ guide to Google SEO.