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Organic SEO is the process of optimising a website to make it gain higher placement on a search engine results page (SERP), but without being paid for – it relies on natural methods. These methods include a focus on boosting keywords and writing high-quality, relevant content to ensure your website is given the best chance at being at the top of the SERP.
The opposite of organic SEO is a process known as ‘paid search’, which relies on paid rankings and PPC (pays per click). Some businesses will choose to use a combination of both processes, whilst others will only focus on one. We prefer organic SEO, believing it to be the most important strategy for long-term website growth – however, we also offer PPC and other services to facilitate different objectives.
SEO stands for search engine optimisation. The organic part of the phrase refers to the natural search results that are found beneath the ads section of a search engine – basically, any search result that has not been paid for.
The more you use organic SEO and optimise your website to use it efficiently and effectively, the higher your search rankings will be on Google and other search engines such as Bing and DuckDuckGo.
Google is the predominant search engine, holding 91.9% of the global market share for search engines. An interesting fact: less than 10% of people move onto page two of the search engine index, showing just how important it is to optimise organic search to get onto the front page.
As organic SEO is not paid, it is based on natural results, and therefore requires a significant investment with these methods – you’re essentially gaining FREE traffic, so with just that little bit more time and effort, you can completely transform your SERP rankings.
Every search engine has an algorithm in place to display the best and most relevant results for their user’s search and topic of interest.
Organic SEO focuses on unpaid methods, making it much more strategic and driven by algorithmic results, meaning there is a strong focus on the content, keywords and the natural enhancement of the website.
Long-form content is also a key factor when talking about organic SEO and is something that is becoming increasingly popular, due to how effective it is.
Search engines have ‘crawlers‘, which will scan the internet for information about the topic of choice and the context of the connected web pages by travelling through hyperlinks. The information gathered is then stored in a search index and every web page is catalogued by its context.
The crawlers help search engines gain an idea about a website’s position within the organic search results and where it should rank based on its relevance.
In your page content, the keywords and links you choose will factor heavily into how well your web page is scored as both features help the crawlers to determine context. Ranking highly in the data collected by them, therefore, means you will also rank highly in the search engine results!
Simply put, organic SEO is incredibly effective when it comes to digital marketing and generating website traffic, still accounting for more than 50% of all website visitors, particularly in the world of business. This alone shows that organic SEO is an important tool, but it’s not the only reason why this is so. Statistics give a very clear picture of the importance of organic SEO, showing that Google records more than a mammoth 2.3 million searches every minute, with the top five search results on Google receiving almost 70% of the clicks.
These statistics clearly show that SEO is important, so the more optimised your website is for SEO, then the more traffic you should receive, boosting your business in the process. Incorporating relevant and quality content into your web pages will give it an authoritative stance, bringing people back to your site and increasing brand awareness and loyalty, which, in turn, should increase traffic to your website even more. Additionally, organic listings receive 90% of the clicks on the Google index.
By matching keywords correctly to the aims of the user, you can slowly build up trust, leading to people staying on your site longer, as well as returning regularly. With organic SEO, those using your website are making a deliberate decision to click on your links and view your content, delivering better quality results and traffic to your website.
Whilst PPC might initially bring more people to your content, it’s likely to be short-lived when compared with organic SEO. Longer-lasting results that provide more stability in terms of site traffic are obviously preferable.
An interesting thing to note when comparing PPC and organic SEO is that there are occasions in which paid ads have actually been banned by search engines such as Google. One example is cryptocurrency – an industry that has boomed substantially in recent years. In 2021, the Advertising Standards Agency announced that paid ads for cryptocurrencies would be banned on sites such as Google and social media platforms like Twitter & Facebook, opening a big gap in the market for organic SEO.
Cryptocurrency is not the only industry that a ban on paid ads has affected, with junk food advertising also set to be banned online in the UK (as well as before 9 pm on television), showing another area in which organic SEO can triumph. Sites that are banned from paid ads will now have to turn to using organic SEO to promote and win traffic, leading to organic SEO taking control of these markets entirely.
This is a hard question to answer, as the cost of organic SEO will depend on a number of different things. For example:
SEO tends to be cheaper than other digital marketing strategies like PPC in the long run. The reason for this is that, once the content has been created and uploaded to your website, you don’t need to keep paying for it or adding additional content if you don’t want to – yet the results will keep paying off.
With PPC and Paid Social marketing, you have to keep adding money to the pot to actively keep them going, whereas you don’t have to do this with organic SEO and content marketing. When traffic is driven to your website via links, there are no costs involved, unlike with PPC, where there is a cost per click (hence the name ‘pay per click’).
It’s also quite common for companies to over-invest in PPC when compared to organic SEO, as the short-term results often look better. However, any legitimate business should be focusing on the long term, so investing in organic SEO is a must.
Start-ups often use a lot of PPC when they’re first starting out in order to build up more profit at a time when it’s much needed. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as it’s a good way to bring in an income quickly, but if you’re interested in retaining your business and increasing your search engine compatibility, then organic SEO also needs to be added.
Sometimes people add organic SEO but under-invest in it, continuing to put most of their money into PPC instead. This can be just as detrimental as not using organic SEO at all – it’s best to go the extra mile. Studies show that 80% of internet traffic comes from search engine traffic, making organic SEO a no-brainer.
It stands to reason that the more you invest in organic SEO and the more content you require, the more expensive it will be. However, as this page will show, organic SEO is incredibly beneficial for any business, so the results should pay off, particularly if you choose a reputable digital marketing agency such as Embryo to complete your work.
There are several different ways in which you can measure organic SEO and how successful it has been for your business, but the most common tools to do this are Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
Google Search Console is a tool designed to track the status of your website and the pages contained on the site. Older users may remember the platform under the guise of Google Webmasters, but the name has since been changed to make the software seem more accessible.
Google Search Console works by showing users where their website and its pages rank within the Google search engine, also allowing you to track any issues as they occur. It’s a free tool, so long as you have a Google account.
Google Analytics is perhaps more well-known than Google Search Console. It is used as an analytics tool that allows users to track metrics, numbers and other statistics related to site performance. As well as providing data, Google Analytics can also be used for SEO purposes.
Information about how a website is used and the demographics of the people who use it can be obtained by using this software – data can also be gathered about how to improve the website using organic SEO, so you can implement the required actions later on.
If you’ve been in the digital marketing game before or own your own website, you’ve probably heard the term ‘local SEO’ before. Both local SEO and organic SEO have their purposes and most companies will use them to some extent in different ways
In basic terms, local SEO is the process of optimising your online presence to increase local business and improve your profits through local traffic. For example, if you search for a supermarket and its opening times, the search should bring up the closest supermarket in your area – this is local SEO in action. It’s a really important way for companies to communicate with their customers and bring in targeted traffic – what’s more, the evidence shows just how effective local SEO really is.
Another important aspect of local SEO is the concept of reviews. With the blossoming of the internet age, online reviews have become more and more popular, with many people seeking out places such as Tripadvisor, Trustpilot or Google Reviews before deciding to visit a location.
If you have a Google Business Profile (something that is recommended for most businesses), then the reviews section should be activated, allowing customers to leave positive (hopefully!) reviews and provide feedback – which you can act on if needed.
Good ranking factors for local SEO include using online citations and mentions of your business in online business directories, using online reviews to your benefit, using tools such as Google My Business to assess the data surrounding your business and how to improve it, and general SEO tips, like making your website mobile friendly and the use of keywords.
By utilising local SEO correctly, you can ensure that your business is one of the top rankings for the local area – perhaps even the first, depending on what you are selling and how many similar businesses there are nearby.
Whilst there are some similarities between local SEO and organic SEO, they’re also rather different beasts, and most businesses will want to implement elements of both SEO options to optimise their websites to the best of their ability.
Simply put, local SEO focuses on organic searches based on your local area, bringing up relevant businesses and organisations within a certain radius, with those closest to your location being prioritised.
However, whilst organic SEO uses some of the same techniques as local SEO, it’s not location-specific, making it more generic to match a broader demographic. Things such as online reviews won’t be as important to organic SEO due to this (although they may still appear), as the businesses that appear during an organic search could be located thousands of miles away. The reason businesses tend to rank on the first page, even if they are located a long distance away from you, is purely down to the principles and techniques associated with organic search.
When utilising organic SEO correctly, you’re essentially making your website as user-friendly and searchable as you possibly can – one of the key factors involved with this is making sure it’s as crawlable as possible for the crawler bots that search engines use, which will help your website to rank higher.
To rank highly in organic search, you need to utilise things like keywords and topic clusters. The other key aspect of organic SEO is that, in order to rank highly on Google, your content must be well-researched, authoritative and trustworthy, as these are things that Google considers to be important.
So, in simple terms, local SEO uses similar concepts – however, it’s mostly based around local businesses and optimising your website towards local traffic. Organic SEO, on the other hand, lends a lot of its tactics to local SEO, but it’s more general and is not location specific.
When you think of SEO, the first thing you probably think of are keywords, which are words or phrases used to define and describe your content.
Keywords are the words that your customers are most likely to search for. They need to be relevant to the topic you are writing about, so companies often use tools such as Frase to better optimise their content.
Keywords are therefore essential to the world of organic SEO, and marketers can use them to get more traffic and rank higher in search engine results pages. The more keywords you use and the more accurate they are to the thing you’re writing about, the more likely it is that your content will rank higher when searching, thus leading to more traffic to your website in general.
However, whilst keyword research is still extremely important for organic SEO, there is a tendency amongst some to overuse keywords (known as keyword stuffing) even when they don’t make sense within the context of the piece. At Embryo, we recommend focusing on keyword topic clusters instead of just specific keywords – a tactic which hasn’t failed us yet! Again, you can use Frase and other keyword tools to hunt down topic clusters, so it shouldn’t be too hard to implement this system into your website.
A topic cluster refers to several pieces of content that all revolve around the same topic/keywords, giving your readers comprehensive information about a certain topic. In this model, content is usually written for different pages that surround a central page, which covers the main topic in detail.
Whilst there is obviously still a place in the SEO world for keyword ranking, topic clusters have become more and more important of late, as Google tends to favour this sort of content, with their algorithm changing recently to reflect this.
Topic clusters allow for more detail, accuracy, nuance, expertise and authority, so it’s no surprise that Google values them so highly. Research shows that linking between different pages on your website will result in better overall placement in SERPs (search engine results pages), particularly if you interlink effectively and as often as you feasibly can.
One thing to note is that implementing topic clusters into your website will be more time consuming and costly than just simply using keywords, but this effort will pay off in the long run. Using topic clusters means your website will be optimised more effectively for Google, as well as being more user-friendly in general.
What does E-A-T stand for, you might be thinking? E-A-T is an acronym for ‘expertise, authoritativeness & trustworthiness’ – three qualities that are very important for companies wanting to increase their search engine index rankings, particularly in Google.
Google are generally quite cagey about how their algorithms work, but they have confirmed that they use the principles of E-A-T within them. If you’re using organic SEO, then incorporating E-A-T is a must, although it isn’t the leading ranking factor on the search engine.
E-A-T has been around for almost a decade, being first introduced in 2014 when Google published their ‘Search Quality Guidelines’ that year (more on this below), with the fully abridged version consisting of 160 pages being released a year later. Since then, E-A-T has risen to prominence, with each version of these guidelines since then containing more and more mentions – the 2020 version contained 131 mentions of E-A-T.
The data that E-A-T refers to helps Google to optimise and improve its algorithms, even though it’s not considered to be a direct ranking factor on their search engine.
E-A-T allows businesses to tailor their websites to the three principles of expertise, authoritativeness & trustworthiness. The expertise of the site’s table of contents is looked at (rather than the content itself). Including contributions from people considered to be experts in their field will help you to score points in this area.
Authoritativeness is another important factor, as it looks at the strength of the domain and also the authority of the website and its content. This is based on external factors like online brand mentions and external linking from other websites in the same field.
Trustworthiness focuses on how trustworthy the content is, as well as how trustworthy the domain is, making it similar in some ways to the expertise factor.
The ‘Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines’ are used by thousands of third-party ‘Quality Raters’ who give feedback to Google themselves, rating the quality and authority of the pages at the very top of the search engine.
The three qualities that define E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness & trustworthiness) are ranked by these raters as an important attribute of search quality, showing that there is a link between E-A-T and the way Google ranks its searches, particularly since the Medic Update was introduced.
E-A-T was introduced by Google in 2014, but it only became well-known in 2018 after the notorious Medic Update that came into effect that year. The Medic Update was one of the largest updates Google had rolled out at the time, affecting many different websites but primarily the organic rankings for fitness, health & medical enterprises (hence the name of the update).
Google claimed it didn’t target those websites specifically – however, they were the ones hurt most by the update. One of the more common theories behind why these sites were affected the most was that there were a lot of low-ranking sites giving out poor or unfounded health & medical advice, which is something Google does not want to promote.
Whilst some sites within these categories were disastrously hurt by the Medic Update, quality medical publications benefited from it.
Google is known for rolling out new algorithm updates every so often, with an aim to improve their search rankings. The Medic Update was instigated to try and improve the identification of authority and expertise online – something Google values highly above low-authority sites with little expertise.
Whilst Google hasn’t come right out and said the Medic Update works in accordance with E-A-T, it’s clear from the way it works that it’s very much a part of it.
Organic SEO is extremely important when it comes to the world of business, so it’s important that you assign enough budget to it in your marketing strategy.
The tips listed below should help you get the ball rolling – however, if you do decide you want more advice or want to work with Embryo directly, contact us today and we’ll be happy to help!
The first thing to do when trying to improve organic SEO is – of course – to check what your current search ranking is. There are a number of ways in which you can do this, and you don’t necessarily have to budget much. Tools like Ahrefs, for example, provide a free keyword rank checker tool that you can use.
Cornerstone pages are another key feature. In a nutshell, cornerstone content represents your website’s main (and most comprehensive) pages. Once identified, you’ll need to ensure these pages are optimised for your most important keywords, as well as linked back to from other related parts of your website and other reputable sites.
You can include numerous web pages as cornerstone content, so long as those pages contain enough informative and authoritative content. Your cornerstone pages will usually consist of long-form content with a high word count. The aim here is to make your cornerstone pages an authority on the subject matter that you’re writing about, instead of aiming to sell something.
Cornerstone content should have a prominent place on your website, with links from other web pages going back to your cornerstone pages. Whilst SEO optimisation should come naturally due to the very nature of cornerstone pages, if you make sure you use all the tips laid out on this page within your cornerstone pages, you should be onto a winner in no time!
Optimising your page titles is another key tip for utilising organic SEO to your benefit. Whilst optimising your page titles may not directly influence your search engine rankings, it’s all part of the bigger picture, leading you towards the end goal of having a fully optimised site. You can use your page titles to provide context and relevance for other sections on your site, as well as the information on the page itself.
Title tags are something you’ll probably have come across if you’ve had a hand in creating a website. For those unfamiliar with title tags, they’re basically HTML tags that display on SERPs. You can optimise them to get the best ranking for your website.
Title tags are different from your header tags – however, with both options, keywords (particularly your anchor keyword) should be placed in the title for your page, as well as in most of the resulting headers on the page itself, which is where organic SEO and keyword research comes in.
Your titles should also be relevant to the content on the page. This will help Google crawlers to figure out what exactly your page is about. Another thing you should do is use unique tags on each page – duplicating them may seem like the easy option, but they’ll often be ignored by Google and the other search engines if you do this.
Your title tags should be between 50-60 characters in length. There are several tools available to you that you can use to test how optimised your title tags are, including the Google SERP Preview Tool and SEO Site Check-Ups Meta Title Test.
One of the main things we at Embryo tend to repeat over and over again is the need for long-form content. Back in 2021, we completed a word count study of 24,774 keywords. In this study, we looked at the average number of (meaningful) words on the web pages that ranked within the Google top 10 results. The evidence speaks for itself, with the top three results having 2,855, 2,923 and 2,683 words – the lowest word count for the top 10 overall was 2,230 words in total.
While there is no set word length that we recommend, long-form content is much more effective regarding organic SEO than short-form content. Not only does it tend to have more authority and be more detailed than short-form content, but it ranks better in terms of Google’s parameters and you can get more keywords and topic clusters into your content. Of course, this depends on the type of content you’re producing and the audience, and you don’t want to be waffling on or repeating yourself either. Trying to fill a word count for the sake of filling it isn’t useful either, so you must make sure that your long-form content is useful if you’re going to use it.
This doesn’t mean that there isn’t a place for short-form content, but if you’re serious about using organic SEO to market your business, then long-form content is the way forward.
As well as your cornerstone pages, you also need to have other web pages and blog posts that link to them. By adding new content regularly, you will indicate to Google that your site is not inactive or stagnant – therefore, still a priority to be indexed.
Using supporting content also links into something called topical SEO, which is where a business aims to rank on a search engine based around topics, although this doesn’t mean keywords should be neglected either.
The more authority a page has, the higher it will rank on Google, meaning that if you have a lot of content based around the same topic, then your site will be seen to have topical expertise. This is one way in which you can use different SEO tactics together, as keywords should be combined with topical expertise in this situation.
Alt tags are another big factor when considering website design and page rankings. These tags, often known as alt text, can be used to describe the function of a page or the appearance of an image on a page. This makes your web page more accessible to both human and robot eyes (Googlebots).
Humans: The alt text will be used instead of images if there is an issue with the image loading. This is useful for people who are vision impaired, allowing screen readers to read the information out, instead of an image simply being displayed.
Robots: Alt tags are used for SEO optimisation, as they allow crawlers to read and understand what the image is, meaning they should be used for every on-page SEO strategy. Google themselves have suggested the use of alt tags within content to make it rank higher, so they’re definitely essential.
At the end of the day, there’s no point in implementing all these tools if you don’t have good content. Here at Embryo, we believe that exceptional content is the key to having real success with organic SEO, and it’s something that we pride ourselves on. It’s important to know what constitutes good content in order to be able to write it – the more you practice writing, the better you will get.
Good content is made up of several things – expertise in the field, attention to detail, and an understanding of SEO best practices. Your content needs to be tailored to your company, as well as the client base you’re targeting.
Keywords are a major deal within content writing and organic SEO, so it’s a good idea to get your keywords in first. Tools such as Frase are particularly useful for optimising content based around keywords and topic clusters, and can also be used to create the outline of your work if you have a particularly hard topic and aren’t sure what to write about.
Links are another important factor – many people choose to just include one link at the start of the page and one at the end, but this is something we consider lazy.
Good content should feature lots of links and not just at the start of the paragraph – linking in the middle is preferable. Google will pick up on good quality links within your content, thus helping to rank you higher in their search engine.
In 2022, Google released an update to their algorithm, known as the ‘helpful content update’. This update has specifically been integrated in order to sift out poor content with fewer links, meaning that in order to rank highly on their search engine, you have to produce good content
There are many different ways in which you can optimise your website to rank highly on Google and the plethora of other search engines out there. It’s important to recognise how you can implement these strategies so that you can optimise your website to be the very best site it can be. We’ve listed a few handy tips below that should help you get started.
‘People Also Ask’ (PAA) is a feature that you might not be aware of – it’s a box featured on SERPs, with Ahrefs finding that 43% of new enquiries now show one of these boxes. The basic premise of PAA is that it answers a set of questions that users are likely to ask when searching for a specific thing, with the information coming from a specific web page or site. Whilst PAA boxes won’t feature for every search and can vary in terms of queries, it can’t hurt to use them, as any tool you can utilise within your SEO strategy is bound to impact your overall search rankings.
In order to be eligible to rank in Google’s PAA tool, you need to optimise your site with reader intent in mind. By using content that meets the E-A-T principles laid out further up this page, you’ll double your chances.
Another tip is to write content that is question-based, fitting the Q&A format of the PAA. Questions are generally considered to be a good SEO tactic anyway, as they facilitate the likelihood of useful content being included on your site.
With the rise of modern technology and most people now having access to mobile phones, it’s imperative that you optimise your site for mobile devices. How widespread are such devices? Well, in 2019, [there were over 80 million mobile phone subscriptions in the UK](https://www.statista.com/statistics/387184/number-of-mobile-phones-per-household-in-the-uk/#:~:text=Mobile in the United Kingdom,population of 66.8 million inhabitants.), despite the population being less than 70 million at the time. Depending on what sort of business you are trying to market, it might be worth creating an app for people to access it, which can be easily downloadable onto mobile phones and tablets.
Whether you create an app or not, you still need to optimise your site for mobile use. As mobiles and tablets typically have smaller screens than PCs, part of your optimisation will be making the desktop version of your site mobile compatible. If you don’t optimise your site for mobile use, you may lose visitors and your search engine rankings could drop. Google themselves have some tips on how to do this, and it’s worth pointing out that 58% of people access websites via their mobile devices, showing just how imperative mobile optimisation is.
Google revealed a mobile-first index in 2018, which ranks sites based on how well their mobile site is optimised. Sometimes people try to reduce the content on their mobile site when compared to the normal website, but this is not a good idea. The content should remain the same, as stated by Google, but in a trimmer format.
If your website is already well optimised for computers, then that’s half the battle done already. The main issue that occurs is usually due to performance, so site speed needs to be improved across the board, with a focus being put firmly on the user experience.
Local search is also very important when focusing on mobile devices, as people tend to use their mobiles when they’re out and about. Interestingly, 76% of people making a local search visit the business location within 24 hours, so local SEO should be instigated on both mobile and desktop devices.
There are three main categories of organic SEO techniques that are commonly used by digital marketers:
Before implementing organic SEO into your digital marketing strategy, you should run yourself through the three terms and work out which heading your business comes under. At Embryo, we value white hat SEO practices over grey hat SEO and black hat SEO practices – Google does too, so you should always lean towards using white hat SEO over the other two types available.
The terms for these different types of SEO come from the old age of Western cinema where, to help the audience distinguish between the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys’, the good characters wore white hats, and the bad characters wore black hats.
They’re terms that are sometimes used in other areas of expertise – for example, the hacking world. Ethical hackers are known as ‘white hat hackers’, whereas malicious hackers are known as ‘black hat hackers’.
Grey hat SEO is basically – you guessed it – the middle ground. It adopts the good and bad of SEO practices, utilising some white hat techniques whilst, at the same time, partly exploiting the search engine. It’s riskier than white hat SEO and can cause issues with search engine rankings, but you’re unlikely to dabble in anything illegal or get banned with grey hat SEO, unlike with black hat SEO.
Generally, grey hat SEO refers to ill-defined content that Google hasn’t commented on in either a positive or negative light, which makes it quite difficult for writers and SEO experts to know whether these grey hat techniques can be used and what their effect on search engine rankings will be.
The problem with grey hat SEO is that something that may be considered to work one year may change or be considered negative by Google the next year, which would mean changing and updating all your old content. Whilst grey hat SEO tactics may not necessarily be a negative thing, it’s probably best to stick to a white hat SEO strategy in the long run.
White hat SEO basically refers to the body of approved SEO practices, and it’s something that any good writer should be aiming for. Those who use white hat SEO are those who ‘follow the rules’, essentially acting in an ethical way when producing their content, following the guidelines set out by the search engines themselves. By following Google’s guidelines, you can use white hat SEO for the better, naturally elevating your status and keyword rankings.
When it comes to following white hat SEO practices, Google is fairly open about what their guidelines are and tend to roll out updates if they want to tweak their algorithms in some way.
Black hat SEO refers to unscrupulous optimisation practices – basically taking shortcuts instead of implementing SEO correctly. No matter if you implement black hat SEO tactics knowingly or not, your site will be penalised for cutting corners.
One of the main issues with using black hat SEO practices is that they may seem to be effective for a set period of time (and if we’re being totally honest, some of these tactics do work somewhat) but will ultimately damage your search ranking in the long term.
You’re less likely to have success if you choose to go against search engine guidelines, particularly the rules set out by Google. Google regularly changes its algorithms and updates them to try and divert people towards more authoritative and trustworthy content, so by employing black hat SEO in your work, you’ll be going against Google’s rules and may find your website falling much lower down the rankings.
Another issue is that, by using black hat SEO, you might also be in danger of breaking the law and using illegal strategies, which is something you need to avoid. Potentially illegal forms of SEO include:
Even if you don’t get into legal trouble for using these strategies, you may find that you or your website is banned from Google or the other search engines you’re aiming for, so it isn’t worth trying black hat SEO.
There are quite a few other search engines that manage to co-exist alongside Google, with Microsoft Bing, Yahoo, Ask.com and DuckDuckGo being some of the more popular ones – saying this, their popularity pales entirely in comparison to Google.
Most tactics used with organic SEO will also work on other search engines, even when optimised for Google. However, Google should always be your main focus. As an example of its wide adoption, Google dropped for five minutes back in 2013, resulting in global web traffic plummeting by 40%, showing just how massive Google really is.
Different platforms and browsers use different search engines as their default search engine – this can obviously be changed later, but many people will continue to use the search engine that their device came with, which can add up to quite a bit of traffic.
One thing to note is that many organisations and digital marketing agencies tend to focus their organic SEO solely on Google, leaving a bit of a gap in the market for the use of other search engines. Other search engines may bring up content within their searches that isn’t immediately available when searching for the same thing on Google, so there is a niche to be carved out by using other search engines if you know what you’re doing.
The Google Chrome browser obviously uses Google as its default – however, Mozilla’s Firefox browser uses Google as a default in many regions. In some areas, other browsers such as Baidu (China) or Yandex (Russia) are used. Google is banned in China completely, and whilst the platform is still available in Russia, it’s subject to mass censorship. Therefore, it’s wise to factor in the location of your target audience when deciding on which search engine to concentrate your efforts.
Whilst savvy people can potentially get around the Google ban in these areas by using a proxy and other similar programs, many people choose to use the standard browser in their nation, so if you want your business to reach people in these countries, then different SEO tactics will be needed.
Paid ad sales were recently banned in Russia, so organic SEO definitely seems to be the way forward there. DuckDuckGo is a search engine with a twist, focusing purely on privacy and encryption. It’s the default search engine when using the Tor browser to access the deep web – however, this isn’t something a normal business would normally want to advertise on, due to its shady reputation and small audience share.
Understanding what makes Google stand heads and shoulders above the rest of its competitors is key to developing good SEO for it. Reputation is a huge factor that pushes people to use Google without even trying other search engines, due to the familiarity that comes with using something you know (which is also an example of how organic SEO should work, by driving repeat traffic to your website).
Google was also one of the first search engines in existence, being officially launched way back in 1998, so many people will have grown up using it, adding to that familiarity factor. Google is also a lot faster than its competitors and has a greater deal of choice, due to having virtually millions more users within its index, as well as an algorithm that produces more relevant results.
Innovation is also key – until relatively recently, Yahoo used to give the top search results to those businesses that paid the most, which often resulted in inaccurate results at the top. Instead of following a similar path to Yahoo, Google decided to create a unique algorithm that focused on relevance to the search, the number of links on the site, and the overall quality of the page. Paid ads therefore only take up a portion of the SERP, which has allowed them to earn money whilst still providing a reliable and trustworthy service for its users.
From these examples, we can clearly see why Google is the top search engine, and part of that is due to its algorithms and the way they use organic SEO to rank websites, using a combination of both SEO & paid ads.
This is a commonly asked question and one that will usually depend on whether you’re utilising local SEO to its full potential. Whilst organic searches and SEO aren’t typically used for local SEO, you may find that local search is naturally enhanced by the use of organic SEO, if you’re using it well.
Organic SEO is a more general term, applicable to the process of improving web page rankings within search engines through the use of authoritative and expert content. Local SEO is slightly different – whilst some of the same tactics are used, local SEO tends to be based around local businesses, whereas organic SEO can be based around any business or web page, whether it’s local or the organisation is located hundreds of miles away.
Different processes are used for local SEO – for example, reviews may be left on Google Reviews (which can be managed via Google My Business), whereas with organic SEO, you may use keywords, topic clusters and long-form content in order to increase your rankings within a search engine. However, using organic SEO tactics should help increase your local SEO somewhat if you’re using it correctly.
Keywords and topic clusters can also be particularly useful for local SEO, especially if your business is one of several similar businesses in the area, competing against each other. If someone makes a local search for a business in the local area, they’re more likely to go for the one at the top of the search engine page.
By using organic SEO processes, you can ensure that your business will be listed at (or near) the top of the search results, which will make it more likely that people will seek your business out, particularly if you work in a competitive local industry. By combining local SEO and organic SEO, you can ensure that your business and its associated web pages are at the top of their game, securing you as much traffic as is humanly possible.
In short, absolutely! SEO is one of the – if not the – most important aspect when trying to bring in as much traffic and as much profit as possible.
That said, with other tactics such as PPC and paid social ads emerging in recent years, many people have now moved across to those options instead of focusing on SEO. One of the most common things we tend to see is companies either neglecting their SEO in preference to other types of digital marketing, or abandoning it entirely. It’s not uncommon to see a business investing huge sums of money in PPC, with a much smaller budget being allocated to SEO.
It’s good to use a range of different marketing strategies so you can get the most traffic from a good range of sources, but neglecting SEO is a major mistake that many companies make. The explanation for people over-investing in PPC is that it tends to give you faster results, equating to large amounts of money being generated in a short space of time.
Most marketers tend to agree that SEO is the most important form of digital marketing out there, and for good reason. With PPC and paid social ads, you have to keep investing money to keep the program running, whereas once your content is written and it’s SEO optimised, you don’t have to pay any more money for it, yet it will keep working.
The statistics also show that SEO is extremely relevant still – over 75% of clicks happen on the first page of Google and most people don’t scroll past the first page. What’s more is that the majority of Google users only ever click on the first five sites listed on page one – optimising your content using SEO is the only way you can be listed that highly on the search engine, showing just how relevant SEO currently is.
Everything you’ve read so far on this page has hopefully demonstrated, at least partly, that SEO is incredibly important for marketing your business. At Embryo, we believe that SEO is imperative to online success, particularly with the rise of technology and the internet dominating the current marketing industry, like most other things. But if you’re not quite sure about SEO and need a little more proof, then this section is for you.
Firstly, the statistics speak for themselves. If your website has a high ranking or is listed on the first page of Google, you have a much higher chance of people visiting your website and engaging with your company. Evidence shows that the first page of Google accounts for over 71% of clicks – whilst this number can fluctuate at times, it’s usually very high. A whopping 85% of organic clicks result in the user remaining on the site/engaging with the company.
The higher your website ranks in a search engine, the more traffic and clicks it will get, leading to more sales and ultimately profit for your business. So it’s clear from these statistics that SEO (particularly organic SEO) is extremely important in the digital marketing world.
Whilst other digital marketing services (e.g., PPC & paid social media ads) can be useful, SEO accounts for more clicks, sales and traffic than any other online marketing format. This shows that, even if you do use other forms of digital marketing (it’s always a good idea not to keep all your eggs in one basket), SEO needs to be a priority. You also don’t need to necessarily pay to keep SEO running on your website, as once the content is up there, you can keep it there for life.
However, with other digital marketing options like paid social media ads and PPC, you have to pay money to actively keep your campaigns going, which can end up being rather costly in the end. SEO should be cheaper, so if you’re just starting out or find yourself strapped for cash, then SEO could be a game changer for you.
So as you can see, SEO is fundamental in the digital marketing game, particularly if your website is ranked within the first five links on the first page of Google. It’s important to note that good content and white hat SEO are the basis of what you should be aiming for, as bad content and black hat SEO will not help you with your marketing goals, particularly with the new update Google has rolled out recently.
You generally have two options available when deciding to implement organic SEO into your digital marketing strategy. Agencies such as Embryo exist, but you can also use a consultant.
Whilst both options have their pros and cons, your decision will largely depend on the budget you have, the strategy you want to implement, and the nature of your business itself. You don’t have to stick with using one or the other either – some companies decide to utilise both in order to maximise their earning potential and effectiveness.
When working in any business, it’s good practice to work alongside people and companies that are trustworthy and reliable, both for your own reputation and the good of the organisation you work for. This is of particular importance in the digital marketing field, as it requires a great deal of expertise and knowledge. This is one area in which Embryo excels as a digital marketing agency, having a reputation for being extremely trustworthy and results-driven.
Creating a new marketing strategy, and particularly one that deals primarily with organic SEO, can be a hard task, especially if the organisation requiring the campaign is starting from the ground up. That’s where we come in.
Marketing tools can be rather expensive to purchase, especially if you run a smaller business and don’t have a great cash flow at the moment. Not only do we have expert insight but also access to tools that a layman or a freelancer would not. Going one step further, we’re even building incredible SEO tools in-house – fancy a demo? Check out Intermingle here for free.
A reliable and highly skilled digital marketing team like the specialists employed at Embryo will tailor each marketing campaign individually to suit the interests and needs of your business. The process of implementing organic SEO and digital marketing, in general, is an ever-changing thing, so it can be hard to stay on top of any changes that occur. By outsourcing your marketing needs to Embryo, you can ensure that your content will be at the top of the game and kept up to date by those who specialise in the industry.
Another reason to choose an agency over a consultant is that a consultant generally only works on one aspect of the digital marketing process, be that strategy, planning or execution. An agency will usually complete the whole process for you, taking some of the stress away from you and allowing you to make time for other things.
A top-quality digital marketing team will be able to show you statistics to show the impact their work has had on your business, allowing you to see the positive effects in real time. Of course, the most important thing for any business hiring a digital agency will ultimately be the results – good quality content will set you apart from the competition, increasing traffic and profits overall.
If you’ve read through the information on this page and want to find out more about us and what we do, then don’t hesitate to get in touch today! More comprehensive information of how SEO works can be found in our downloadable SEO guide. Don’t forget that we offer a free 30-minute consultation, in which our sales team can discuss your options and create a unique package specifically designed for your business.
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