Organic Search Engine Optimization

Organic search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the natural search engine results returned by a search engine like Google or Yahoo. When you insert text into a search engine and run a search, there are two types of results returned to your web browser: organic and paid.

Paid results are displayed based on a pay-per-click (PPC) program that someone actually paid money to have appear when you type a specific word or phrase into a search engine. The rest of the results that are unpaid, or natural, are what make up the organic results of a search engine query. Here’s a quick demonstration of the two types of search engine results:

Anatomy of a Search Engine

There are a number of things you can do to boost your results in the organic search engine results, which we will outline and review. There are four major areas where you’ll want to focus your organic search engine efforts:

  • Keyword research
  • Code optimization
  • Link building
  • Directory submission

Keyword Research

Keyword research is where you will likely spend the bulk of your time when investing in organic search engine optimization. The actual code changes don’t really take that long to complete, and won’t really be effective unless you get this first part right.

The first step in completing keyword research comes from your product or service. You already know what you have to offer, probably all too well. The most difficult part of the keyword research process is stepping out of your own shoes and thinking like a consumer. You have to be able to envision what someone who has never heard of your product or service would potentially type into Google or Yahoo! when searching for a product or service that you offer. A very valuable part of this process is second opinion, as people outside your business will be able to provide you the most accurate feedback. It will vary, but you should be able to determine a short list of key words or phrases that consumers would most likely type into a search engine when looking for you.

There are also a number of tools available to assist you here, which are listed in our SEO and PPC resource center.

Code Optimization

After you’ve completed your keyword research and determined which key words or phrases you would like to go after, you need to begin inserting those words and phrases within your web site. Search engines return results on the page level, meaning that you should pick one or two words or phrases per page. Once you decide on your page, the areas where you will want to insert the key words and phrases are as follows:

  • Meta tags: These get picked up by the search engines, just don’t overdo it. Just mention your words and phrases once, and that’s plenty.
  • Title tag: work the phrase into the title of your page.
  • Header text: All those <h1> tags are weighed more heavily in the eyes of the search engines. Get those phrases in there.
  • Bolded text: After your header tags, emphasized tags are weighed more heavily than regular paragraph text.
  • Links: Links are potentially the most important. If you have your key words or phrases linking to other pages, it will increase both the value of the linking page, and the page being linked to.

That’s really it. There are other page-level analysis items you will want to think about, like how often the word or phrase is used compared with the rest of the text on the page (keyword density), and there are tools like WebPosition by WebTrends available for helping you out with page- and site-level analysis of key words and phrases.

Link Building

Possibly the most valuable thing you can do for your web site’s search engine optimization campaign is get other reputable web sites to link to you. The emphasis is on reputable because we are well beyond the days of the quantity of links being the deciding factor here. We are in an age where quality links matter most, and a large quantity of quality links will garner the higher rankings. Take a look at your industry, and find a few web sites that are "industry standard" news resources, and try to get listed on those sites.

While you’re working on getting listed on the industry relevant web sites, you can start listing yourself on other web sites that are reputable, if not specific to your industry. Depending on your business, you can potentially create a Wikipedia page. You could talk about your web site on Yahoo! Answers or Google Groups. You could submit an article to Digg that highlights a great page on your web site.

If you’re looking for more ideas like these, SEO Book is a great place to start. A cheap subscription to this service will provide you with everything you need to know about link building, and search engine optimization in general.

Directory Submission

Last but definitely not least, is directory submission. Before search engines, there were directories. Now, there are still directories. They’ve been around for a while, so they are reputable. You can list your web site for free in many directories. Like link building, it is not the quantity of directories you list your web site with, but the quality of those directories. The Marketing Panther recommended directories are:

The above directories are the most reputable and quality directories on the web. If you submit your web site to these directories, you’ll have an extremely solid basis in your web site’s directory submission status.

Once you have the above four major areas under control, you’ll be well on your way to performing much better in the organic search engine results. If you’d like further information on specific tools and research options, visit our SEO and PPC resource center. Growl.