Now that you know what organic SEO is, you might be wondering how to turn that information into an effective strategy for your business.
Let’s dive into a five-step organic SEO strategy that is sure to get your website in Google’s good graces. You could also consider these some organic SEO best practices.
Step 1: Conduct keyword research
Keyword research is extremely important — in fact, some would say it’s the basis of effective organic SEO strategies.
When you perform keyword research, use a tool like keywordtool.io to identify valuable keywords for your business and industry. Start by entering keywords related to your products or services.
From there, you can see variations of those keywords, their search volumes, competition, and cost-per-click value.
Ideally, you’ll choose keywords with high monthly search volumes and low competition — this is the secret sauce when it comes to finding effective keywords.
When you’re choosing keywords, you should consider targeting a variety of short-tail and long-tail keywords. Short-tail keywords are more general keywords like “ice cream cake.” Long-tail keywords are more specific keywords and phrases like “chocolate chip hand-dipped ice cream.”
As you can see, these keywords are very different and attract searchers with different intents.
If you run an ice cream parlor and write a page that targets the keyword “ice cream cake,” you’re going to have a really hard time ranking for that keyword in search results.
Why? Because thousands of other ice cream parlors are also trying to rank for that exact same keyword.
As you can see, the search volume is super high for the keyword, but so is the competition.
On the other hand, if you write a page that targets the long-tail keyword “chocolate chip hand-dipped ice cream,” you’ll have a much easier time ranking since not every ice cream parlor will create content about that product. The search volume is much lower, but so is the competition.
See why keyword research is so important?
Step 2: Create content to target your most qualified keywords
After you’ve chosen a list of keywords that will effectively target your audience, it’s time to start writing.
Google ranks this content in search results, so like we mentioned before, it’s important that it’s informative and beneficial to readers in order to earn top organic rankings.
You can choose to publish a variety of content types to target your keywords.
For example, a blog allows you to publish a steady stream of fresh content, which Google loves. You could also publish long-form content, which is typically more than 2000 words in length. Google also loves long-form content since it proves that you’re an expert on the topic.
No matter what kind of content you choose to write, you should strive to provide the best possible information to users about your target keyword.
Step 3: Add multimedia to your content
One of the most important organic SEO tips is to add multimedia to your content. Although multimedia may seem trivial, it is far from it. In fact, there are tons of perks to adding multimedia to your content.
First, when we say multimedia, we’re talking about images, infographics, and even videos. This kind of content is great for breaking up long walls of text and helps keep users engaged on your page.
But how does multimedia benefit your organic SEO campaigns?
When you keep users engaged on your site pages, you keep them on your website for longer. Like we mentioned earlier, dwell time, or how long users stay on your website, is an important Google ranking factor.
Any little addition to your page that helps keep users on your site longer is another second toward your overall dwell time, which can benefit your search rankings.
Step 4: Optimize your site’s page speed
We also mentioned that page speed is another Google ranking factor, and for good reason. Remember how we said Google wants to provide the absolute best results to users?
Consider this.
More than half of search engine users, 53 percent to be exact, will leave your website if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Although that sounds like breakneck speed, it’s not all that uncommon in today’s technological age.
Here are a few organic SEO tips to consider when you’re trying to improve your page speed:
- Compress your images: Although huge images look beautiful on your website, they often bog down your page speed. Use a tool like Kraken.io to condense your images and still keep them looking beautiful!
- Reduce number of redirects: If your website has a lot of redirects, it can slow down your page speed since the server has to look for two separate pages, the redirected page, and the page it’s being redirected to.
- Browser caching: Browser caching stores website resources on local computers when people visit your site. This frees up space for your pages to load faster since browser caching “remembers” resources instead of downloading them again as visitors browse your site.
These are just a few solutions to slow page speed.
Step 5: Optimize your internal linking structure
When you create an internal linking structure on your website by linking your pages together, you make it easier for Google to crawl your site.
In order for Google to determine if your pages are worth ranking, search bots first have to crawl them. Crawling allows them to take note of what keywords your content targets, what your images depict, and more.
However, if you want Google to have an easy time finding and crawling all your site pages, it’s extremely beneficial to create a strong internal linking structure.
You can do this by simply linking to other pages in your site content. For example, if you’re talking on one of your services pages about how easy it is to wash out the carpet that you sell, and you just wrote a blog about how to do so, you can link to your blog on that service page.
Likewise, you can link to your carpet product page within your blog.
When it comes to satisfying organic SEO best practices, you’ll want to do this with all of your site pages and ensure that they’re all linked in at least three pages of your website for optimal internal linking structure. In addition, you’ll want to consider the hierarchy of your website pages when linking internally.
