What is organic SEO?

Nov 03, 2006

When I first heard of organic SEO I thought it must be some exotic (for instance, I find AJAX and Ruby on Rails exotic) and cryptic way of optimizing web pages. Then I did some research and was pleasantly surprised to discover that I’ve been doing organic SEO for a long time without even realizing I’ve been doing organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

So what exactly is organic SEO? It’s getting found on the search engines without paying the search engines for the placement, and keep getting found for a long, long time. But is this the right definition? No, this is not, but this is its greatest benefit and since my primary focus is always the benefit, I’d rather mention the benefits of organic SEO first.

Benefits of organic optimization

People click more on organically optimized websites
Anyone can pay his or her way to the top position. This not only happens in the real world (social, political, relationships, etc.), it happens in search engines too these days. You can pay Google or Yahoo! to get good position on search result pages. But then, if search engines are meant to show results according to relevancy of the found pages, why do you need to pay for the placement? Hence, people don’t generally trust websites that pay to appear on search result pages — it means your content is so mediocre that you have to pay to be found. So they trust, hence click, links that appear naturally on the search result pages. If they appear on their own, it mean there is a greater chance of finding the relevant content there.

The search results are long-lasting
Organic SEO keeps your website appearing on the search result pages for a long time because your website gives the search engines exactly what they want — relevancy. Relevancy is something you cannot achieve by “tricks” or by paying for it. You can only be relevant by being relevant, and that means, constantly generating content that people want to find and consume. As long as you ensure relevant content, other websites link to you, and the search engines love your website for that.

Organic SEO builds greater trust
If you are constantly adding organic (read natural) content to your website, it shows you really care for what you present on your website that shows you take interest in your business and that further shows you are really there to do business and have not just created a website on a whim. Organic content also manifests your deep-rooted knowledge of what you are involved in.

It’s quite cheaper compared to paid listings
Since many website owners are competing for the same spot at the same time, you often end up paying a lot to appear at a desired spot on the search result pages. Take for instance the expression “web designing”. Somewhere I read the bidding on Google AdWords often exceeds $35 per-click for this expression. So, even if 10 people click on the AdWords ad, the website owners end up paying $350. You can get 4-5 pages organically optimized for the same expression and keep appearing on the search result pages for a long time without having to pay for every single click.

Now, I’m not against the pay-per-click programs. For some companies — the companies that can afford to pay — the programs generate great results. But companies and individuals having limited budgets and plenty of desire to work hard can organically optimize their websites

You can achieve organic, or “natural” SEO by:

Optimizing your content

Mind you, by “optimizing content” I don’t mean nonsensically stuff your web page with keywords and key phrases. Although many an SEO “expert” practice this and attain good rankings but they either get the websites of their clients blacklisted or have to constantly struggle with their similar competitors, hence incurring great cost and brand nuisance.

Legitimate optimization on the other hand achieves good ranks by involving lots of relevant content. It is not important how many times you use a certain key expression, what’s important is how you use it. Just write good, well-meaning content that specifically talks about the product or the service, or about whatever message you want to convey, and you achieve organic optimization. You should lots of pages written about what you offer on your website. For instance, if you sell furniture, have lots of pages about what sort of furniture you sell, how you make that furniture, what are the qualities and benefits of your furniture. Write some case studies about how your furniture helped some of your clients relax more when at home. You’ll need to be creative.

Spreading your links

There are some doubts regarding how beneficial it is to exchange links with other websites and personally I’m not very convinced about the various link-exchange programs. I’m a content writer and I see everything from this perspective. Have good content and other websites will link to you. They will also link to your specific pages if they think their visitors will benefit from these pages. This is how some search engines gauge the real relevance of your web pages. If so many websites are linking to xyz.html, then xyz.html must be an important, relevant page.

I think you should avoid simply exchanging links with other webmasters because it doesn’t solve any purpose simply because it defeats the whole purpose of relevancy and hence, search engines don’t rank such websites well.

Including Meta tags and other tag attributes

Not all meta tags are important but <title> and <description> are still considered by the search engines. You can also put your keywords in the “alt” attribute of the <img> tag. Also, when you are putting text links on your web pages, the text between <a> and </a> should contain your relevant key expression.

In the end, it is relevant content that can help you win the search engine game in a long-lasting, legitimate manner.