What is Organic SEO?

Our organic SEO agency can improve your website in order to increase your local search rankings and thereby clicks to your website. It is estimated that over a third of searches are local. When you take into consideration non-geo-targeted keywords, this statistic is nearer to 50%.

Google is continually gaining a better understanding of what the public want from their searches and this includes returning location specific results from non-specific searches. For example, this can mean that if you are on your laptop in your Chelmsford office and you search ‘marketing company’ the result will be marketing companies based in Essex. The bottom line is; if your business can provide a service or product to local customers, you should optimize for local searches.

One way of doing this is to optimize your local listing. This is a really simple process and it is certainly worth doing. Below are the steps you would take to make sure you are ready.

  • Claim your Google+ page and make sure it is complete.
  • Insert some great images and ask for customer reviews
  • Build local citations

Furthermore, asking for feedback and reviews on websites like Yell.com can really support you and increase your rating on this. 

If you are attempting to optimize your website for a local search, citations are a good comparison against traditional link building for organic searches. Confirming that your website is correctly optimized, building domain authority, and claiming local listings are all vital stages. Below is a checklist that our organic SEO team often uses to ensure our clients have taken significant steps towards local ranking.

  • Is their site listed in local directories?
  • Have our clients claimed any pages they own?
  • Is every page of the website unique and mention a different service or product?
  • Do our clients have reviews on sites like Yelp or Google places?
  • Does the website have quality inbound links?

All of the points above are simple but many people don’t take advantage of them. Taking the time to complete each step will lead to more traffic and hopefully conversions for your website.

So that explains what you should be doing. What should you avoid?

Don’t forget that as easily as taking the right steps can help your site, incorrect ones will actually reduce your rankings and in severe circumstances, your site will be penalised.  While you may be keen to begin your local campaign, below are some frequent oversights that you need to avoid.

Listing a Virtual Address

Believe it or not, Google is smart and knows all about both virtual offices and P.O. box addresses. The difficulty with virtual addresses is that they are assigned to several businesses, resulting in multiple entries all allocated to a single address. As you can imagine they are not really seen as reliable as effectively anyone anywhere in the world could take them out and they don’t actually need to be there.

Not Completing Your Google+ Profile

While they refute it, Google fancies itself. Therefore Google +  is a wonderful chance to generate an indexed social profile for your company. You must produce a profile and include all the relevant details. Ensure that you take your time when you choose your industry and include some images as they may be used in the SERP’s. It’s also a really quick way to find your brand in the organic SEO listings. 

Using the Wrong Keywords

Have you ever seen those ‘bargains’ that promise to rank your site or your money back? The chances are they plan to rank your brand name if all else fails. Of course, ranking for your brand isn’t bad, but it’s not going to be bringing traffic in. After all who searches for your brand but people that know of you.

Make sure you don’t rush and focus on quality. If you never learn anything else about SEO let it be this – It takes time. An effective plan will begin with a solid foundation – something that cannot be built overnight. Online marketing is a marathon not a sprint, which often means it takes some time to see visible results (unless of course we are working on a short term promotion!) We understand this can be quite exasperating. Clients often ask why they are spending money without an immediate return on investment. There are a few reasons you must be patient if you want to rank well. Keywords like ‘SEO in Essex’ and ‘websites in London,’ for example, will be very difficult.

There is an abundance of content on the Internet and you need to compete with this. Just to give you an idea 72 hours of video footage are uploaded to YouTube every sixty seconds! If you want to rank well you need to post consistent content for an prolonged period of time. This is not an overnight fix.

It takes time for search engines to index your content. Even though you click ‘post’ and the details are available online within seconds it takes time for the search spiders to find, crawl and index your content. You need to be trusted. The same way you may visit Argos or Currys for your new TV, you would not visit the local newsagents who are selling some on a one-off promotion. You don’t know if they are reliable or if they will last. The same principle goes for your website!

Good SEO is adapted and fine-tuned.

Googles parameters don’t stay the same so your content shouldn’t either. A good marketing company will go with the flow and adapt. The method search engines use to rank your site change often. These alterations have been known to bring previously profitable sites to their knees. You can’t just hope your SEO works, you need to know what you are doing. 

Google doesn’t often trust speed. In light of the above information you can imagine that search engines such as Google are wary of sites that gain too much traffic, too quickly. Way back when, you could add hundreds of backlinks and overnight you would reap the rewards. Although the benefits of this were very short lived, you could do it again and again. Now, a list of unnatural looking links will mean Google penalises you.There are numerous SEO methods also contributing to the slow process of good quality SEO.

Here are some examples:

White hat SEO:
Where SEO is carried out naturally.

Black hat SEO:
Where SEO is completed by spamming techniques.

Grey hat SEO:
Where a combination of both whitehat and black hat are used. (Not easily identifiable by Google)


Google frowns upon any type of black hat SEO so consequently, this tactic should never be used. In conclusion, you may find your SEO has a slow start the overall impact can last years! It’s better to have a professional working on your site, so you don’t inadvertently cause yourself issues. 

 

If you would like to find out more, click here to contact our dedicated organic SEO Agency