Organic search and search engines are critical to sustain your website over the long-term. In fact, if you can get these two working together, the user traffic to your website will increase markedly. As a result, there will be more clicks on your website, and, even better, more conversions.
So, what does a good result means for your business when you use organic search and search engines with your marketing strategy? It means that a web user may see the detail your website on the first result page of the search engine. From there she can click on the link to arrive at your website or landing page.
Getting your detail on the first results page of a search engine is a huge achievement. Indeed, your website has been chosen in front of millions of others by the search engine. The reason? Because your website is deemed the most relevant and to add the best value for what the user was looking for…
It is important to get your website listed as high as possible on the result pages of search engines. Because web users move hardly beyond the first couple of result pages of a search engine 2. Why is that important? Well, if your website detail doesn’t show up on the first result page – then your link won’t be clicked. And a link that is not clicked results in nothing – not for the searcher and definitely not for your business… So, sadly, your website will join million others in the ‘bugger all’ space of virtual irrelevance.
Good results with organic search and search engines do not come by themselves. For instance, you need to write your content in such a matter for search engines to find your content relevant and valuable.
But first we need to look at organic search.
Organic search
Organic search, also known as search engine optimization (SEO), refers to the way search engines find the most relevant match to a searcher’s keyword 1. Also, organic search in its purest form does not require the website owner to pay for this service; it’s free, kind of…
At this stage we need to contrast organic search with another search tool called paid search. Paid search, also known as PPC (Pay-Per-Click) is by definition a search tool that businesses need to pay for. Marco Mottola writing recently for Forbes highlighted the differences between organic search and paid search:
- Targeting your audience. Paid search let you decide who will see your ad. Indeed, you can specify demographic filters such as age, location and income. However, with organic search you can’t specify who sees your search results.
- Pay for clicks. You will pay each time a searcher clicks on your paid search result. There is no such charge when a searcher clicks on an organic search result.
- Appearance on the result page. Paid search results have ad extensions with extra links, phone numbers and callouts. Featured snippets may appear with organic search results.
- Immediate impact. When you use paid search, your audience sees your ads right away. Organic search results builds over a period of time. Your brand starts to rank months after creating content and implementing a strategy.
- Long-term value. While organic search takes longer to rank, it adds long-term value to your brand. There has organic search lasting results that grow over time.
What have Search Engines to do with Organic Search?
A search engine like Google has a lot to do with organic search. Indeed, a search engine is some kind of software, which collects data about web sites. It uses a special program, which is named a spider or a bot.
The data collected by the spider includes the website URL, some keywords or keyword groups that define the content of the website, the code structure that forms the web page and also links provided on the website. The related collected data is then indexed and stored on a database.
When users perform a query in order to get some data or information, the related query is transferred to the search engine index and results are shown to users.
If I think about a search engine – Google comes immediately to mind…
The Google search engine
Google is the most popular search engine in the world, with these fascinating stats provided by SEO Tribunal:
- Google has 90.46% of the search engine market share worldwide.
- 15% of all searches have never been searched before on Google.
- Google receives over 63,000 searches per second on any given day.
- An average person conducts 3–4 searches every single day.
So, the Google search engine play a huge part in where your website’s content rank in the search results pages.
How to get your website on the first result page of Google?
Thrive Hive suggests that your need to the following to improve your chances of getting your website listed on Google’s first result pages:
- Determine Your Keywords. Determine which search queries you want Google to answer with your website pages. For example is you’re selling clothing, use keywords such as ‘evening dresses’, “faded jeans”, or ‘red jerseys’.
- Tell Google Your Keywords. Make it as easy as possible for Google to scan, index, and retrieve your site. Do this by placing your keywords in the following places of your web pages: Title; Meta Description; URL; and Alt tags.
- Write for Humans. The key to getting on the first page of Google is providing useful, trustworthy, easy-to-read, but informative content that will keep your target audience on your pages and coming back for more.
- Emphasize Location. Make sure your website clearly indicates your city and/or geographic area, via your contact page.
- Optimize for Mobile. Google favors mobile-friendly websites.
- Focus on User Experience. Google will notice a website with intuitive navigation, clear calls to action, and answers to your visitors’ most immediate questions.
Last word about Organic Search and Search Engines
Businesses owners need to setup their websites for organic search as soon as they make their sites public. Remember, search engines look at the quality of your content and the experiences that you give your users to decide where your site will rank on their pages.
Results with organic search won’t necessarily show overnight. However, it will show after a couple of months – and that will mostly be a lasting result…
Read also: Is Search Engine Optimization A Viable Tool for Online Retailers?
Notes
1 Moran, M. and Hunt, B. 2014. Search engine marketing, Inc.: Driving search traffic to your company’s website, IBM Press.
2 Yalçın, N. and Köse, U. 2010. What is search engine optimization: SEO?, Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 9:487-493.
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