Everything You Need To Know About Organic SEO
SEO (or search engine optimization) is essential for the success of any online business and without it, you won’t get very far on any search engine’s ranking. Why’s that important? Well, when someone’s looking for the service you provide, they Google it. If you’re not showing up on the first few pages of Google, no one will find your website.
There are so many techniques out there that will help you improve your SEO, it’s difficult to distinguish between useless hearsay and important nuggets of wisdom.
So, we’re here to let you know everything you need to know about organic SEO and how it can help your business grow even bigger than it already is.
Wait, what is organic SEO?
Organic SEO, also known as ‘natural SEO’, generally takes a long time to execute into your marketing strategy but it will give you better end results. It works by focusing on content creation, keyword enhancement and anything you can naturally do to your website without having to pay an advertising fee.
Organic SEO is a low-cost way to promote your website - but it does take at least 6 months to see results. Word to the wise - don’t trust anyone that guarantees you the top spot on Google in a month. 🤔
Non-organic SEO, also known as artificial SEO/paid inclusion/PPC (pay-per-click), does give you quick results and will help you bump your initial ranking and placement in the search engines, but it generally lasts a short while and is less effective in the long term.
Artificial SEO acts by concentrating on search engine marketing which involves using paid advertising or PPC and usually only lasts as long as you’re willing to pay for it.
The differences between the two forms of SEO:
Organic SEO
Gives you slow, but long-term results
Free (apart from time/hiring someone to do it for you)
More traffic in a longer time period
Non-Organic SEO
Gives you immediate, but short-term results
Paid (PPC = pay-per-click)
More traffic in a shorter time period
How long does it take to improve your organic SEO?
SEO isn’t a short term game and you shouldn’t see it as such, especially when it comes to fixing problems you may have on your site.
The length of time it takes to improve organic SEO on a site usually depends on:
You current SEO health — penalties mean your efforts will take longer to get results
Your team’s expertise
Your competition’s efforts
You’re not going to reach the top of Google overnight, but you can work on boosting your site in a cost-effective way every day to get yourself to the top and keep yourself there.
SEO is a long game and your efforts need to be monitored regularly. Search engines are always changing their minds on what features are most sought after by users, which means they change their rankings often - which is why you need to stay on top of the game.
Now that you know a little bit about SEO it’s time to figure out how you can go about improving your organic SEO for your company.
Audit your site
Before you even think about improving your SEO it’s a good idea to put your website through an audit. This will let you see what needs doing to your site and what is already working perfectly. There isn’t really any point in fixing something that isn’t broken and if something is broken, it needs to be fixed before you waste hours of your time on techniques that won’t work because your foundation is broken!
For an SEO audit you usually take into account:
Your website structure
The layout of your content
The content on the website
How your site is built in the back-end
This audit will help you to see the weakest area of your website so you know where to focus first. This will allow you to structure a plan that will help improve your organic SEO and get your website working as efficiently as possible, as quickly as possible.
Speed up your site
Loading speed is a critical point in organic SEO. Having a page load slowly on your website could be the end. People are impatient and they don’t want to have to wait for the page to load. They’ll simply click away if they think things are taking too long. Google knows this and actively demotes slow websites on their listings.
Write for your audience, not for Google
People are still trying to manipulate search engines by stuffing their content full of keywords in order to get noticed. This isn’t going to do you any favors. Google HATES keyword stuffing, as does every person visiting your site. For the love of your website, do not put random keywords into your text!
You need to write quality content for your audience. They’re the ones who are going to be making an appointment with you or buying your products. Google doesn’t have a credit card, but your audience does! So write for them.
When you write your content forget that search engines exist and concentrate on your end-user. Who are they? What are they like? What sort of content will benefit them? These are the questions you need to be asking yourself when you’re writing your content. Not wondering how many keywords you can fit into your opening paragraph.
Funnily enough, if you put the effort into putting your users first you’ll be rewarded. Your helpful content will attract more of your audience which will make you look good for Google’s algorithms.
Learn from an Expert
One of the experts in organic SEO is Neil Patel. His blog and you tube channel is educational and approachable for the beginner. He also has a tool called ubersuggest that we’re beginning to leverage as well. There is a free and paid version. Try the free version first to familiarize yourself with SEO terminology and then consider the paid version as you get more of an understanding of tactics. There are other SEO tools too but they’re a bit pricier and usually used by people who are doing SEO for clients.
Craft exceptional meta titles
Something that is often forgotten and overlooked, but helps improve organic SEO significantly, is the use of excellent meta titles and descriptions.
The meta title and description of your page is the first thing any user sees on the search engine - so they need to grab their attention and not let go.
Write a title that gives your audience everything they need to know about your page. Don’t write something irrelevant and avoid anything misleading either. Your meta descriptions should also be full of detail, but short and simple. You need to be able to attract the attention of your audience in a few sentences and encourage them to click on your page.
The more people who visit your site the higher you’ll rank on Google which is why it’s important to have brilliant meta titles and descriptions.
It’s also important not to have any meta titles or descriptions that are the same. Duplicate content on your site is bad anyway and having duplicate content for your meta titles and descriptions can do just as much damage.
Writing persuasive, yet informative meta titles and descriptions are kind of their own art form - practice makes perfect. We at Design Powers are just beginning to really get the hang of this and incorporating it into our own site as well as the sites of our clients. I liken blog writing and SEO to exercise, the more you do it, the more you build that muscle, the easier it gets to become second-nature and incorporate it into your process.
If you think your website’s organic SEO isn’t working as well as it should and dragging your website down schedule a web review. We can give you some basic tips to increasing your organic SEO. We’re here to help small business owners figure out exactly what their online business needs are and we’d like to help you.
Did you find this guide on organic SEO helpful? Do you think we missed out on something important? Let us know in the comments, we’d love to hear from you!
