What Is Organic Search in SEO?

If you run a business, you will understand how vital search engines are for your business. Since most users search for businesses through search engines, understanding how search results work is important for optimizing your business. Search engine optimization is the process of marketing your website in order to increase traffic to your website via a search engine. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is done to ensure that your business shows up in the first few results of a search. In today’s market, it is absolutely necessary to know what position your website comes up in an organic search. 

In this article, we’ll cover everything that makes up an organic search and organic SEO. Then, we’ll explain some popular forms of SEO before discussing organic traffic. Lastly, we’ll discuss the overall importance of organic searches on businesses. 

What Is Organic Search?

Using a search engine like Google or Bing, organic search results are the results provided naturally by said search engine. This means it only includes the results provided by the search engine’s algorithm based on relevance. This does not include paid advertisements. Since organic search results are gathered by the search engine, they should all be relevant to the user’s search. They should even be organized according to their relevancy, with the most relevant results first. 

These results are presented on a SERP, or a search engine results page. A website’s SERP ranking is very important. Most users don’t look past the first page of results. Some might not even look beyond the first result itself. Businesses want to make sure that their website is first, or at least high, on a search’s results page. The goal of all this is to increase traffic to their website and hopefully increase the amount of business they receive. Many businesses offer SERP ranking analytics in order to see where your business falls in a search. You can also search certain keywords yourself and see where your business comes up. 

What Is Organic SEO?

Because SERP rankings are so important, businesses will try to optimize their content in order to show up higher in relevant searches. This is called search engine optimization or SEO. There is an entire industry within marketing built around SEO. SEO involves many different elements, all of which are important. 

Keywords in Organic SEO

One of the most important SEO elements is the keyword. A keyword is a term that a user enters into a search engine to find a specific result. To maintain a high SERP position, it is important to make sure your website has relevant keywords. This way, when users search for those keywords, your business is one of the first results. For example, if users looking to cater a wedding often search “bakery,” you might want to make sure your website includes the word “bakery” included if it is a bakery. 

Not all keywords are this straightforward, however. It can be difficult to compete with large brands to be the first result for vague keywords like “clothes” or “books.” That’s why many businesses focus on specific keywords relevant to their business. Using the same example as earlier, your website might want to include keywords related to your bakery’s location, what kind of cakes it makes, or the quality of service. This way, you might not get the highest ranking for every keyword search, but you’re more likely to show up in specific, relevant searches. Be warned though, using too many keywords can negatively impact your website’s traffic. Keywords should also be used thoughtfully throughout your website. They shouldn’t be randomly placed throughout your site, but instead integrated into its content. This brings us to another important part of SEO, which is content creation. 

Content SEO

Similar to keyword SEO, content SEO involves producing content that will potentially increase the ranking of your website in a search engine’s results. Content creation comes in many forms, but for the most part, all content SEO involves producing material that uses relevant keywords in order to improve SERP rankings. This content can be anything, but some types are more popular than others. 

One of the most popular forms of SEO content is a blog or article posting. Blogs are a great way to answer users’ questions and provide information relevant to your business. For example, if you run a flower shop, you might consider dedicating a section of your website to a blog about flowers. There you can answer questions about flowers, publish related news, or even just post about your business. 

Often, SEO blogs and articles will aim to answer common user questions. This way, users will receive answers to their questions while also going to a relevant business’s website. Using the same example, a florist’s blog might create posts that answer questions like “what flowers are in season”. Then, when users search this, they will be directed to the florist’s website, thus increasing their traffic and engagement. Blogs also usually feature internal links that redirect users to other parts of the website. Clicking these links keeps users on your website, hopefully increasing the likelihood that they will become a customer. Videos, infographics, and case studies are other popular forms of SEO content. 

Organic Search Definition

By definition, an organic search does not involve any paid advertisements. If you’ve ever searched for something and seen several links tagged “Ad” before the first result, then you’ve encountered paid search engine advertisements. While optimizing your website to be one of the first organic results is effective, some businesses might desire more traffic from customers. When that is the case, businesses can pay search engines to show up for certain keyword searches. Even though these are paid advertisements, search engines still want to ensure that the results are relevant. This means that these ad positions might not go to the highest bidder, but to the most relevant bidder. 

These ads may also target specific users based on their data. For example, a business may want to pay only for searches in their area. As a result, search engines like Google will only promote that business for relevant searches based on the user’s location. Contrastingly, an organic search includes all of the results that are naturally relevant to a search. This excludes any paid advertisements, instead focusing only on those that most closely resemble a user’s query. The traffic that a website receives from an organic search is called “organic traffic.” 

What Is Organic Traffic?

Organic traffic refers to the visitors who discover a website through an organic search. A website’s traffic involves the amount of visitors it is receiving. Every person who visits a website is a part of that website’s traffic. Typically, larger websites receive more traffic than smaller ones. Businesses are often looking to increase their traffic, because more traffic usually means more customers. 

Organic traffic is highly sought after by businesses. Even though many users click the first result provided by a search engine, many also ignore the first few paid advertisements. Instead, many potential customers are more interested in organic results. Users often find these results more trustworthy, since they know they are ranked only by relevance. Organic traffic is often more reliable in the long run than paid traffic. Sometimes, it can be easier to update your website to be more relevant to certain keywords than paying for an advertisement that might be overlooked anyway. This is why optimizing your site is so important. In order to maintain a steady flow of organic traffic, it’s important that you optimize your website to organically show up in relevant searches. 

The Importance of Organic Searches

Organic searches are incredibly important to a website’s success. You should maintain and optimize your website well in order to show up in organic searches. An organic search is a search free from paid advertisements. These searches only show the most relevant results, listed in order of their relevance. Where a website lands amongst these results is also important. Businesses typically want to rank as high as possible in order to secure the most traffic to their website. In order to do this, many businesses employ SEO to ensure that their website will show up when users search for relevant questions or keywords. While SEO can involve many things, some of the most popular forms involve using keywords and content creation. 

Search engine users tend not to scroll past the first few results, but they also avoid paid advertisements. This is why organic SEO is so important. Businesses need to make sure their website will place high in an organic result. Otherwise, viewers might overlook them. Organic searches are very vital to a website’s traffic and overall business. Search engines are the most common way for customers to find businesses, so make sure your business shows up in relevant, organic searches. 

FAQ:

• What does organic search mean?
• What is an example of an organic search?
• How are organic results and paid results different?
• What is organic traffic?
• What are examples of content for SEO?