Exploring the factors that influence search results, it’s fundamental to differentiate between organic and non-organic search. Organic vs. non-organic comes in the context of SEO vs. SEM. When buying products, you come across the same terms, organic and non-organic. What comes organically hasn’t been intruded on by men, whereas whatever is non-organic is touched and intruded.
In SEO, the term organic refers to results that are not influenced by marketing or advertising. These are the results most relevant to the searcher’s query. Google’s spiders crawl and reach these results since these pages are optimized according to the standards of search engines. On the other hand, the non-organic results are pushed. They usually appear with the signal “Ad”.
Organic Search Results Types
Organic results refer to the search engine results pages (SERPs). On the SERP, we come across content in many types. There are different organic results types in which content may be displayed. These include:
- Featured Snippets: This is a feature where Google displays a summary of information related to the user’s query at the top of the results in a box. This information is pulled from a relevant webpage and quickly answers the user’s query.
- Video Carousels: Similar to video results, if the user’s query includes video content, Google may display a carousel of videos at the top of the SERP.
- Images: If a user’s query includes a visual element, such as a specific product or location, the SERPs will display image results.
- Top Stories: If the user’s query relates to current events or news, Google may display a Top Stories section at the top of the SERP. These results are typically based on recent news articles related to the query.
- People Also Ask (PAA): This is a feature where Google displays questions related to the user’s query. When a user clicks on one of the questions, an answer is provided in an expandable drop-down box.
- Maps: If a user’s query includes a location-specific element, such as “pizza restaurants near me,” map results will be displayed with markers showing the location of nearby businesses.
- Knowledge Graph: Google’s Knowledge Graph provides users with quick answers to their queries, such as a definition, a brief topic summary, or key information about a person or place.
Appearing on each without promotion requires a thorough understanding and application of the SEO techniques in your digital marketing strategy.
Factors Contributing to Organic Search
A number of factors contribute to organic results on the search. Their influence affects how search engines rank websites. Understanding these factors can help you optimize your website to improve its organic visibility. Some of the key affecting factors include:
Relevant and high-quality content
Creating valuable and high-quality content that meets the needs of your target audience is crucial. Search engines prioritize websites with original, informative, and relevant content that offers value to users.
On-page optimization
Optimizing on-page elements such as title tags, meta descriptions, headings, and URL structures can significantly impact organic results. Using relevant keywords in these elements helps search engines understand the content and context of your web pages.
Site architecture and structure
A well-organized and easy-to-navigate site architecture can improve user experience and search engine crawlability. Creating a logical hierarchy of pages, using proper internal linking, and having a clear site structure can help engines better understand and index your content.
Mobile-friendliness
As mobile usage continues to rise, having a mobile-friendly website is crucial. Responsive web design that adapts to different devices and screen sizes can positively impact organic results on the engines as search engines prioritize mobile-friendly websites.
Backlinks and off-page SEO
High-quality and relevant backlinks from reputable websites can significantly impact the organic ranking of your website. Building a strong and natural backlink profile through outreach, guest blogging, and relationship building can help improve your website’s authority and credibility.
User Engagement
User engagement metrics that include bounce rate, time on site, and click-through rate can also affect organic results. Search engines often see websites with higher user engagement as more relevant and valuable.
Technical SEO
Ensuring that your website is technically sound is important for organic results. Factors such as site speed, crawlability, and indexability can impact how search engines perceive your website and influence its rankings.
If you are already investing in these factors, congratulations! You are up to implementing effective SEO strategies to improve your website’s organic performance and increase its visibility in the SERPs.
What are the factors that should be tracked?
No matter the campaign, if you don’t track the results, you won’t be able to evaluate the effectiveness of your SEO efforts. Imagine training but never weighing yourself.
By monitoring organic results, you can gain insights into the performance of your website in terms of visibility, traffic, and engagement. There are several key metrics regarding to the organic results that you should track. Those are the following:
Organic Traffic
Organic traffic forms the visitors who come to your website through organic results. Tracking organic traffic provides insights into how well your website is performing in terms of attracting visitors through search engines. It helps you understand which pages are driving the most organic traffic and identify opportunities for optimization.
Keyword Rankings
Keyword rankings refer to the positions of your web pages in search engine results for specific keywords. Tracking keyword rankings helps you understand how well your website is ranking for your target keywords and how it compares to your competitors. It enables you to identify keyword opportunities and make data-driven decisions to improve your website’s ranking positions.
Click-through Rate (CTR)
Click-through Rate (CTR) is the percentage of users who clicked on your website’s link in organic search results out of the total number of users who saw your link. Tracking CTR provides insights into how compelling and relevant your website’s title tags and meta descriptions are, and how effective they are in enticing users to click through to your website from search results.
Organic Conversion Rate
Organic conversion rate measures the percentage of organic traffic that converts into desired actions on your website, such as a purchase, filling out a form, or subscribing to a newsletter.
Tracking organic conversion rate helps you understand the effectiveness of your website in converting organic traffic into meaningful business outcomes and identify areas for improvement.
Landing Page Performance
Landing pages are the entry points for organic traffic to your website. Monitoring the performance of landing pages, such as bounce rate, time on page, and engagement metrics, provides insights into how well your landing pages meet your target audience’s needs and whether they are effectively driving user engagement and conversions.
Backlink Analysis
Backlinks are an important factor in organic rankings. Monitoring your website’s backlink profile helps you understand the quality, quantity, and relevance of backlinks pointing to your website.
It enables you to identify opportunities for acquiring high-quality backlinks and managing potential issues, such as spammy or low-quality links. Thus you should explore the advanced link building strategies in SEO and invest in creating a robust backlink profile.
Crawling and Indexing
Monitoring how well search engines are crawling and indexing your website is important for ensuring that your content is being discovered and indexed properly. Tools like Google Search Console provide insights into how search engines are crawling and indexing your website and any potential issues affecting your website’s visibility in the search results.
These metrics will help you understand the performance of your website and make data-driven decisions to optimize your SEO strategies and improve your website’s visibility, traffic, engagement, and conversions from organic results of the engines.
Final Words
The concept of organic is revered in many contexts. Digital Marketing is no exception. In SEO, we differentiate organic and non-organic, i.e. paid search results. Organic refers to search engine results that are not influenced by marketing or advertising. These are considered most relevant to the searcher’s query.
Let’s recap the key points discussed!
- Organic results can appear in various forms, including featured snippets, video carousels, images, top stories, people also ask (PAA), maps, and knowledge graph.
- Factors contributing to the search results include relevant and high-quality content, on-page optimization, site architecture and structure, mobile-friendliness, backlinks and off-page SEO, user engagement, and technical SEO.
- Tracking your search results is important to evaluate the effectiveness of SEO efforts. Key metrics to track include organic traffic, keyword rankings, click-through rate (CTR), bounce rate, and conversion rate.
Understanding and applying SEO techniques can help improve your search visibility. And if you still are wondering why you should, let’s restate that appearing on the search results will provide cost-effective, credible, and sustainable traffic to your website, improve brand exposure, and deliver targeted traffic that is more likely to convert.
