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Submission
and Optimization >>Search Engine Optimization Tips
What is "organic" search and how
can it help your company?
The first time I heard the term
"organic search" I immediately thought of organic food at the grocery
store. So, is this organic search healthier for me? Will it reduce my
chances of getting cancer? Not only can the search engines bring most of
the world's knowledge to my desktop, but now they can prevent deadly
diseases too! Imagine my disappointment when I learned organic search
was simply the next new buzzword for the concept of pure, or
crawler-based search. As some of our readers may find it challenging to
keep up with all of the latest lingo, I thought I'd take a moment to at
least explain the concept of organic search.
Organic describes a
search that returns results by indexing pages based on
content and keyword relevancy. This is in contrast to
listings ranked based on who paid the most money to appear
at the top such as those on Overture.com. Sometimes this is
called "pure" or "natural search" as it is supposed to be
"untainted" by commercial payments or bids.
Historically, Google
has led the way in championing the virtues of natural or
organic search. Its primary focus has always been to return
fast, highly relevant results based on the content of the
page, the relevancy of links pointing to that page, and
other "objective" criteria. Sponsored listings have always
been clearly separated from the organic search results on
Google. However, many other engines have experimented with
mixing the two types of search without clearly labeling
which is which. This has been followed by public outcries,
and at least one cautionary set of statements issued by the
FTC in 2002.
Pros and Cons of Organic Search
vs Paid Search
Unlike organic foods at your local
grocery store, you aren't required to pay extra to reap the
healthy benefits of "organic" search. So what are the
benefits of organic over paid search?
Pros:
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Greater
Click-throughs: People trust "organically grown"
search results more than they do sponsored results. While
the engines business is supported by paid ads, many
consumers prefer the organic search results. Due to the
contextual nature of organic search, the listings can be
more relevant and offer a greater depth of choices.
Therefore, while paid ads can play an important part in
your marketing strategy, ultimately it is the organic
search results that will more likely yield the greater
click-through rates when all other things are equal.
Therefore, it's this type of listing that will maximize
the traffic to your site whenever you climb to the top.
-
Power of
Branding: More and more large corporations are
investing resources into organic search to gain the
marketing benefits of promoting their brand. For example,
most consumers would expect to find Dell.com in a search
for computers. If your company does not show up for the
keyword results in which you'd expect to appear it can be
embarrassing. Consumers may wonder if Company X is as
important as they once were if they don't even show up in
MSN, Yahoo or Google. Conversely, inserting your brand in
the top search results can give the impression that your
company is important. Therefore, smaller companies can
give the impression of big business importance by securing
aa better position in organic search than their larger
rivals.
-
Greater Trust
Equals Greater Conversions: Most adults learn to apply
a healthy dose of skepticism when they see a commercial on
TV, a banner ad on the Web, or a sponsored ad on a search
engine. After all, we know those ads are commercially
motivated and may not always be the most relevant product
or solution for our needs. It may simply represent the
company that was able to spend the most money to get their
message in front of me. Sometimes bigger companies do
offer the best products, but there's no guarantee. There's
certainly not the same level of trust that we see from
visitors arriving from organic search. Organic search can,
of course, be commercially influenced. However, a recent
survey shows that people tend to trust organic results
compared to sponsored listings. On the whole, you should
see more visitors from organic search converting to sales,
assuming your rankings were for targeted, relevant
keywords. In the business world, ROI, or Return On
Investment, is king. Fortunately, organic search can give
you the high ROI you're looking for or your boss is
demanding.
-
Organic is
Free: After all these years, it's still free to submit
to Google, arguably the most popular of the organic search
engines right now. Google has always been adamant about
not charging for inclusion in its index of 4.2 billion
pages. Most other organic engines will also index you for
free, although some like Yahoo do have paid inclusion
options. Paid inclusion simply guarantees your page will
get indexed quickly and stay indexed for as long as you
maintain your subscription, but does not promise a
particular ranking. However, if you have a Web site with
good quality content and links from third party sites,
paid inclusion is "nice-to-have". It can be very useful in
getting pages indexed or re-indexed quickly. This allows
you to quickly test various page designs and to feed news
and other time-sensitive content to the search engine as
quickly as possible.
Cons:
-
Organic Rankings are Not
Automatic: With organic listings, you cannot
simply hand over a certain amount of money and be guaranteed to
quickly and automatically achieve any ranking you desire. Instead,
achieving positions in organic search requires the proper technology,
skill, and know-how. There has always been a cloud of mystery around
the process of achieving top rankings. How's it done? Where do I
start? That's why resources like this newsletter and products like
WebPosition Gold are essential to a business's success in search
engine marketing.
-
Organic Rankings
Require an Investment in Time:
The age-old adage of "nothing worthwhile in life ever
comes easy" rings true with organic rankings. While they
are monetarily free, simply submitting your pages to the
search engines is not enough to bring in a flood of new
visitors to your Web site. Far too many businesses have
been fooled into spending $49 or $99 to submit their site
to "thousands" of sites, 99% of which are obscure names
you've probably never heard of. The key is that someone
doing a search on a major search engine must be able to
easily find your Web site.
If your site is buried at the bottom of the list, or
simply fails to appear in the first few pages of search
results, you can kiss your chances of being found
good-bye. The key is to use responsible best practices
to create pages that are highly relevant to the keywords
that apply to your Web site and the products or
solutions you have to offer. . In other words, optimize
your pages for search engine visibility and see how fast
your position improves. To do this, you simply need to
know what each search engine needs for maximum
visibility. Then tweak your Web page's content while
paying attention to off-page factors like the number and
type of links coming to your page. Tune the pages of
your site to the preferences of the major search engines
and then watch your rankings and traffic climb.
While optimizing your Web site to
rank well for organic searches takes more effort than simply
buying an ad, it can provide your business with one of the
highest ROI results that you're likely to find.
Numerous studies have placed search engine optimization
at the top of the list of the most effective forms of online
marketing. Its low cost, high relevancy, and high conversion
rates make it an ideal marketing vehicle for almost any
business.
The catch? As with any area of marketing, SEO is
a competitive field. Arming yourself with the best technology and
knowledge is key to gaining a competitive advantage. Long-time readers
of MarketPosition know that WebPosition was the first product on the
market to track a Web site's rankings on the search engines and to help
improve those rankings. That early lead has given WebPosition more time
for its technology to grow and mature than any of its competition.
WebPosition's Page Critic module contains a wealth of advice and
statistics designed to move your site to the top of the organic search
results. Not only that, it also tracks your rankings and gives you
advice on how to achieve the best results in both organic and
pay-per-click search engines as well. Therefore, you can capitalize on
the best of both worlds.
This article is copyrighted and has been
reprinted with permission from FirstPlace Software, the makers of
WebPosition Gold. FirstPlace Software helped define the SEO
industry with the introduction of the first product to track your
rankings on the major search engines and to help you improve those
rankings. A free trial
of WebPosition Gold is available from their Web site
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