A modern business cannot survive and thrive in the online arena without search engine optimization. SEO has quickly become a pillar of digital marketing, and as long as we keep using search engines to find what we want online, it will remain in the spotlight.
But as SEO becomes more significant, some distinctions need to be made between organic and non-organic strategies. As you may expect, there are pros and cons to each, and marketers need to strike a balance to max out their results.
Non-organic SEO trends like Google Ads, PPC campaigns, and paid affiliate marketing often get the glory, so today, let’s take a closer look at the organic side of things.
Here are five reasons why your business should focus on organic SEO and some tips to keep in mind as you map out a winning strategy.
1. Save Cash and Lock-In On Content
If you haven’t noticed, content marketing has completely revolutionized digital business in the last ten years. Now, more than 75 percent of companies are using branded content to achieve search engine marketing goals and attract qualified leads.
This marks a dramatic shift away from the “outbound” marketing methods that defined old-school campaigns and emphasizes delivering authentic value to the world at no charge. In other words, “if you build it, they will come.”
Here’s the honest truth about ads: they are great for boosting brand awareness in the short term and targeting specific buyers with laser accuracy, but they often don’t deliver in the long run. Plus, as soon as you cut the cash flow, your traffic ceases just as fast.
Also, realize that ads just aren’t as effective as they used to be, according to HubSpot, which found that about 80% of search engine users completely ignore the paid ads when browsing the results pages.
It has always been the case that most web users prefer organic search results, and once you factor in the widespread use of ad-blocker technology, you wonder whether paid campaigns are truly past their prime.
Finally, organic SEO is far less expensive than any paid campaign out there. Although ROI calculations can be fuzzy, there is plenty of evidence to suggest you earn back more for every dollar spent.
This isn’t to say that organic SEO is free by any means – you’ll still have to foot the bill for content creation, technical work, and some social media promotion. But it’s a far more cost-effective approach to climbing the SERPs compared to paying your way to the top.
2. Evolve Alongside Google’s Algorithm
SEO should be all about adaptation, but focusing too heavily on paid ads can leave your brand behind the curve when it comes to the rapidly changing world of organic search.
According to research conducted by Backlinko, the Google Algorithm makes between 500 and 600 updates each year, varying in scope and severity. By closely tracking and navigating these changes with a flexible organic SEO strategy, your brand stands to benefit greatly over competitors that remain stagnant in their approach.
From domain, page, and site-level factors to backlinks, metadata, and user interaction rules, the rank signals Google relies on to index and sort search results are in constant flux. Your organic SEO strategy needs to be adaptable enough to stay on the cutting edge.
Even if it requires some guesswork and trial-and-error tactics, it’s better to maneuver with the algorithm and gain competitive advantages, rather than simply throwing more money at the problem with PPC and paid ad campaigns.
The best organic SEO strategists keep their eyes on the analytics and their ears open around the industry to gauge how the algorithm is shifting, and they will give your brand the best chance to gain ground in the ranks when it matters most.
3. Create Valuable Connections and Partnerships
There’s one downside to non-organic SEO that always seems to get ignored. When you do nothing but launch paid ad campaigns from the top down, your brand fails to make inroads with the industry’s leading players and gets left out of the conversation.
Sure, you may hit the jackpot on a PPC campaign now and then. Still, it’s far more valuable to gain traction with influencers, publications, media outlets, and other major voices across the web, which will have your back for promotion and partnerships.
Exactly how you go about making these connections is less important than actually making an effort to connect, whether it’s guest posting on a leading blog, working with social media influencers, or using a platform like HARO to get positive press from a news site.
These aren’t just one-off deals, either. As you build a digital Rolodex in your organic SEO journey, you’ll find that what goes around comes around. You will undoubtedly see more opportunities open up as you develop an excellent reputation as a marketing partner and build a dedicated audience of your own.
Who knows, maybe that Instagram influencer you worked with early on will become a superstar overnight, and you’ll have the next viral sensation on your hands. You’ll be glad you aren’t paying the premium on paid ads when you have that leverage.
View organic SEO as an investment in your credibility, authority, and reliability not only in the eyes of potential customers but with the other leading voices in your industry as well.
4. Position Yourself for Mobile and Voice Search Success
You may have caught wind of the huge mobile trend that is changing the way we search and discover information on the go. Now that more than half of all Google searches are conducted via smartphone, it’s safe to say that we live in a mobile-first world.
This means that if you haven’t already optimized your web pages to be crawled and indexed for the mobile-centric search environment, you better get up to speed fast. Not only does Google give a massive rank boost to fast, mobile-optimized websites, but smartphone users also have very little patience when waiting for pages to load.
How you improve your organic SEO on mobile is up to you. Change up your content style, create smartphone-friendly interactive elements, or overhaul your whole site with a protocol like Google Accelerated Mobile Pages.
What matters is that you don’t sit on the sidelines as mobile search takes over.
The same idea applies to voice-activated SEO, which is quickly catching up with desktop and mobile. Look into various long-tail keywords that reflect the conversational tone of voice search queries, and try to get into the top “position zero” spot for a huge boost in reach.
As mobile and voice become the norm, your ability to implement forward-thinking search engine marketing techniques will be more important than ever before.
5. Take Advantage of the Compounding Effect
Imagine paid SEO as the fast-acting firecrackers that explode quickly and leave you with little to show. In contrast, organic SEO is akin to slowly building a foundation for a roaring fire that only gets bigger and more powerful over time.
This compounding effect is one of the most overlooked strategic advantages of organic SEO, especially in a world where big backlink catalogs and keyword dominance require you to play the long game.
Consider a metric like Domain Authority, for example, which looks at a wide array of different rank factors and how your brand performs on keywords and links. While this isn’t an official indicator of search engine success, it can show how your website gradually improves over time as you dedicate more time and resources to organic SEO practices.
This doesn’t happen overnight, of course, but once you start gaining momentum, you’ll notice traffic, leads, conversions, and return customers start to accumulate rapidly.
Just like investing, health, and planting trees, the best time to start your organic search engine marketing game plan was years ago – but the second-best time is right now.
Conclusion
There will always be a time and place for paid ads and other non-organic SEO strategies. You can’t deny the power of the instant visibility and accuracy of PPC campaigns, and as long as they lead to sales, they’re going to be part of the marketing mix.
Always be looking to gain an edge in areas like non-branded online advertising, and outthink your competition with stronger targeting and analytics-based campaigns.
However, organic SEO should be where the majority of your creative and technical energy is spent. It’s where you can make significant strides in the search engine results by applying the proven principles of content marketing.
Don’t let your organic SEO efforts fall to the wayside in the years to come as SERPs get more saturated, and it becomes tougher to carve out territory for your brand online.
Whether you bring on some freelancers, outsource to an agency, or tackle it head-on with your own marketing team, be sure to make organic SEO a central part of your strategy moving forward, and it will pay off in a big way.
