Discover the Best Practices for Organic SEO

Maybe you are already aware of the fact that SEO stands for “search engine optimization,” the practice of improving the quantity and quality of website traffic from search engines like Google to a particular website or a specific web page.

With that said, organic SEO is an online marketing strategy that consists of smaller mini-strategies such as building links to respectable websites and deep keyword research to enable your website to rank towards the top of search engine results pages that happen naturally without being bought. 

Why does organic SEO matter? The answer is simple; statistically, 75 percent of web searchers won’t even bother clicking beyond the first page of the search engine results that pop up from their keyword search. 

Now imagine if your company’s website is only appearing on the fifth page of many common keyword searches?

The consequence of not ranking highly is getting completely ignored. No web traffic means no new leads or sales opportunities outside of those that already shop with you.  

If that wasn’t enough of a reason for taking organic SEO seriously, take into consideration that over 40% of revenue is captured from organic traffic, and search engines deliver a close rate on sales that’s approximately eight times above that of traditional marketing. 

To keep your business competing with the best of them, you must start optimizing your site for organic SEO.

But, if you don’t get the basics correct, such as your on-page SEO, your chances of ranking on page one of Google are practically none. 

Let’s take the time now to discuss the best practices for organic SEO to improve your chances of ranking high for your targeted keywords.

Title Tags and Meta Descriptions 

Metadata (data about other data) is used from meta tags by search engines like Google to gain a better understanding of what a web page is all about. 

This information has several purposes that include informing the search engine page ranking, showing snippets in search results, and sometimes the data is used to ignore meta tags. 

Two of the most integral on your page are your page titles and your meta descriptions.

Title tags are headlines that you can click on that appear in search results and are extremely important when it comes to search engine optimization. 

Google usually showcases the first 50-60 characters of a title, making it key to keep your title tag under 60 characters in order to have the full title to your page displayed. 

Some additional best practices to make use of while selecting title tags are to avoid overstuffing keyword phrases to the point of the content becoming an awful reading experience and staying away from creating duplicate title tags.

But it is recommended that you write a title that matches the search intentions of your users. 

The second most vital meta tag on a web page is the meta description, which is a short summary of a page in the SERP (search engine results page) displayed below the title tag.

Meta descriptions do not directly have an impact on search rankings, but they can influence click-through rates and are most effective when they are descriptive yet concise.

Google usually compresses meta descriptions to 155–160 characters in order to ensure that you give an accurate and short summary of your content.

Best practices to pay attention to while writing your meta descriptions include providing an accurate summary, including your target keywords, writing unique meta descriptions for each web page, matching the search intentions of users, and composing action-oriented copy. 

Make Your Content with Search Intent 

Search intent, also referred to as user intent, is the purpose behind every search query, such as the intention to buy something versus just learning about it.  

Google makes it a priority to understand and satisfy the search intentions of its user. Therefore making it easier for Google to provide accurate answers to its users works in your favor by attracting customers that are actually interested in buying what you offer. 

There are four main types of search intent that users typically partake in:

Commercial: The intention here is that a user’s searches are to find a specific product, but they haven’t made a decision on whether or not to buy it. Their Google search may have the word “best” before the name of what you provide. 

Informational: This search occurs when a user needs specific information, like today’s weather in their city. 

Navigational: This is when searchers want a specific website or app, such as if they typed in the name of your company directly.  

Transactional: This is when the searcher has already made a decision to buy a specific product or service from you, maybe even typing the word “buy” in front of the name of what you other in their Google search. 

Now that you know how and why organic SEO needs to become a part of your digital marketing strategy, start figuring out what content you need to have created.