What is organic SEO?
As the name suggests, organic SEO refers to the process of optimizing your website to rank high on search engine results pages (SERPs) without relying on paid (or blackhat) SEO techniques.
If you want a more in-depth understanding of this topic, check out the FAQ section below:
Question #1: What are the benefits of organic SEO?
The biggest benefits of organic SEO are as follows:
- It helps you save money. This is the most obvious one. Since organic SEO does not use paid channels, you do not really need to set aside any money for it unless you hire someone to take care of it for you.
- It forces you to focus on your content. Because organic SEO does not allow you to pay your way to more web traffic, you are forced to create valuable, high-quality content that attracts and retains traffic organically.
- It forces your competition off the top spot in search engine results pages (SERPs). The more effort you put into your organic SEO, the higher your odds of outranking your competition. This, in turn, allows you to not only effectively keep them from even showing up in front of the people who are looking for their products, services, or content using search, but also divert these people to your own website.
Question #2: What are the disadvantages of organic SEO?
The biggest disadvantages of organic SEO are as follows:
- It could take a really long time to work. Even if you do everything perfectly, there is a big chance you will not see significant results immediately. This is especially true if you operate in a saturated industry. So, you need to be comfortable with just putting in the work and not seeing results for a while.
- It takes a lot of effort. You will need to do a lot of research, use a lot of tools, follow a lot of guidelines, and keep pumping out quality content if you want to see any lasting results.
- There is just too much competition. Even if you do everything right, there is no guarantee that you will rank. There is just too much content out there—with even more being produced every single day—competing for your target audience’s attention.
Question #3: Ways to improve
To improve your organic SEO, you will need to:
- Use the right keywords. You will need to identify the keywords your target audience might use to find your products, services, or content and use them the right number of times in each piece of content you put out.
But do not worry. There are tools you can use to simplify these tasks.
- Stay focused. Do not just put out content for the sake of doing so. Identify the niche you want to focus on and make sure every single piece of content you put out falls under it. The goal is to establish yourself as an authority in whatever industry you are operating in not only in the eyes of your target audience but in the eyes of search engines as well.
- Create shareworthy content. When people share or reference your content, you get more backlinks. When you have more backlinks, you look more of an authority in your industry in the eyes of search engines. The more of authority you appear, the better your odds of ranking high in search.
For more ways to improve your organic SEO, check this helpful website.
Question #4: Is it better than paid advertising?
No, organic SEO is not better than paid advertising—but paid advertising is also not necessarily better than organic SEO. If you want to maximise your website’s traffic-generating potential, you will need to use both.
But if you could only choose one (and you have money to spare), then go with paid advertising so you can get access to powerful targeting and analytics tools, instant measurable results, and easier optimisation for maximum ROI.
Take note, however, that just because you are using paid advertising does not mean it is okay to put out terrible content. You will still need to publish valuable, relevant, and interesting content to convert whatever traffic your paid ads generate into loyal followers or paying customers.