What is organic SEO? A tutorial guide

Organic search engine optimisation (SEO), sometimes known as Natural search engine optimisation, is process by which a website achieves a top position in the search engine results pages through ethical, manual methods. These methods include altering the text and code of a website so it is more visible to search engines and building quality, one-way backlinks to the website from existing websites that are considered an authority on the subject. Organic SEO techniques are regarded as being highly ethical and will not get a website banned from Google or any of the other major search engines.

The opposite of organic SEO is where 'unethical' methods are used to promote a website to the search engines with the intention of increasing its visibility. These methods include keyword stuffing, cloaking, hidden text or link farms. Unethical methods can get you banned from Google and the other main search engines. If this happens, it is virtually impossible to reinstate your website and all you can do is start again from scratch with a different domain name.

How can organic SEO save me money?

Put simply, organic SEO will drive free 'focused' and 'free' traffic to your website. Visitors who choose to look at your site will want to find out more about the business or service you offer. Hopefully this traffic will result in more sales for you. SEO is one of the cheapest and most effective forms of advertising you can get.

Where does it all begin?

SEO changes to a website's text and computer code can be made at any time and will improve a website's visibility to search engines. So even if you have a existing website that is not fully optimised, there are always changes you can make that will see improvements in your visitor traffic. But the ideal place to start your search engine marketing (SEM) strategy is when you are planning your website. For example, even the domain name of your website can have a significant affect on your search engine ranking. Ideally you should choose one that contains a keyword that people are likely to use when they search for your business on the internet.

Keyword research

Keyword and phrase research is always the first stage when you are planning your SEO strategy. Keywords are the words that describe what your business does and are also the words people might use to search for your business on Google or one of the other main search engines. Without proper keyword research and including them strategically on your website, you will stand little chance of getting noticed.

How to optimise your web page

Changes you can make to your website's text and code are often referred to as internal changes. The opposite of this are external changes which refer to link building and directory submission strategies. Internal changes can include changes to:

  • Page title
  • Meta tags
  • Page headings (H1 and H2 headers)
  • Folder names
  • Page text and content
  • Page URL

Changes can also be make to optimise images such as adjusting or adding 'keyword' alt text and changing the image file name.

Submitting your website to directories

A good way to build up backlinks to your website is submit your website some of the many thousands of business directories on the internet. Some of these charge for listings. Many others are free. The problem with directory submission is that it is very time consuming and you may not see the results of your labour for months.

There are mixed views on whether or not it is worth submitting your website to the search engines direct. Many SEO consultants say that it is not necessary as the search engines send out 'spiders' on the internet whose job it is to crawl and index any web pages they find. But one of the quickest ways to get your website visited by a spider is to submit it to popular directories. These directories are crawled regularly by search engine spiders, and it won't be long before your site is found and indexed.

A word of warning - never submit your website to sites that claim to submit your site to hundreds of directories. This is usually done by automatic submission scripts which are frowned upon by Google and can get your website banned.

Link building

One of the most important aspects of SEO is building quality leads to your website (and also another time consuming and frustrating activity). This is because the search engines assign a page rank to your website which is determined by the number of incoming links. The higher your page rank, the easier it is to get to the top positions.

Submitting your website to directories is one method of link building. But there are others. They include:

  • Posting on relevant comments (do not just announce your website - this counts as spam) on blogs and forums (blog post usually let you include your URL in your signature and this will count as a backlink)
  • Asking blog owners for a link to your website
  • Noting what website the blogger has linked to and checking out these sites
  • Looking for relevant websites and asking for links back to your website

SEO tip: an easy way to find out which pages link to any site on the internet is by typing link:www.thewebsitename.com (replace .com with.co.uk if necessary) in Google. This will display a list of backlinks to the site. You can then visit these sites and request backlinks to your own site.

Tracking SEO success

You need to be able to track the success of your SEO efforts and the best way to do this is to use on of the tracking services available on the internet. Perhaps the most well known is Google Analytics.

These tracking systems will give you a vast amount of information such as what kind of traffic you are getting, how many visitors per day / month / year, their geographic location, what keywords they are using to find your website on the internet, what pages they are accessing and what pages are most popular.