Organic SEO

Search engine optimisation (SEO) makes a website more visible, thus improving the quality and quantity of traffic from search engines via natural or unpaid means. Also known as organic SEO, it differs from search engine marketing (SEM) which uses paid advertising, such as Google AdWords Pay-Per-Click adverts to drive visitors to a site.

Most people use a search engine to locate a website, making search engine optimisation (and especially organic SEO) one of the most critical components of online marketing.

A well optimized site will appear in the left column of a search engine return page (SERP). As these returns are not influenced by financial payment, they carry more credibility in the eyes of the customer and are thus more likely to lead to a click through.

Search engines are faced with a daunting task when trying to decide in which order they should list the many millions of websites that exist on the internet. Although each of the search engines has its own algorthims which use hundreds of factors to determine who appears where, there are two major determinants of ranking success.

The first is relevance: a quick assessment will produce a lengthy list of websites which cover the search query topic, so this needs to be filtered by applying the second, and most important, determinant – authority. The search engines will figure that a credible website, such as one that’s been around for a while and has been cited in academic journals, is likely to be of greater interest to the individual who instigated the query, than a lightweight blog.  

The good news is that there are a number of ways that companies can help convince the search engines that they are both relevant and credible.

To address the relevance goal, you need to understand what keywords you want to target. A good organic SEO consultant will be able to tell you which phrases people search for when looking for products and services similar to those offered by your organisation.

These then need to be incorporated into your website. We’ve written a blog on this process which is often called on page optimisation.

Building authority entails getting listed on the search engines, in directories and persuading other websites to link to you, thus building its visibility and credibility in the eyes of the search engines. We’ve also written a blog post on this process which, not surprisingly, is called off page optimisation.

This page is a good example of on page optimisation – we want it to appear relevant to the phrase SEO Company Cape Town, so we’ve included this in the page copy a couple of times as well dropping it into the page title.

If your website isn't generating enough leads - or you feel it could be generating more - contact us and ask for a free SEO audit. We'll check how your site's optimised and give you some pointers.