When you go grocery shopping nowadays, you will always come across the aisle that sells organic food. Everyone claims going organic is good for you, so why don’t we apply this to our online business models as well? More than 90% of online queries start from a search engine, with billions of searches per day from some search engines alone.
WHAT IS ORGANIC SEARCH?
Simply put, it refers to the unpaid search results on a search engine. They are not influenced in any way by advertiser payments are strictly ranked by the relevance of the term. The search results are a result of the algorithm of the search engine and the algorithms of each search engine do vary. Another wonderful term for organic search is SEO or Search Engine Optimization. SEO marketing takes a lot of hard work and not always guarantees a top ranking in the search page.
IF THAT’S THE CASE, HOW DO YOU GROW AN ORGANIC SEARCH?
Like the mantra of anything online:
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- CONTENT is king. And that content needs to be constantly updated and revised to keep up with the change in the algorithms of the search engines.
- And whatever content is provided should in turn benefit the user, i.e., the consumer who will be reading and buying into your idea. Don’t provide content in order to get ahead in the rankings, make sure the content is for the consumer and naturally, the rankings will steadily and organically go up.
- Be an active blogger by posting more blogs and reciprocate the kind gestures of other bloggers. For example, being an active reader who likes and comments on other people’s blogs will ensure you will get the same in return.
- Using long-tail-keywords will surely put the site on the higher rankings as the Google algorithm will mark the site as a destination to go to. Keyword phrases are essential to get noticed by many.
- Using backlinks is underrated as it should never be underestimated. Backlinks provide links to a site from other websites and is a top ranking factor in the Google algorithm. Think of it as this – the higher the number of backlinks, the greater your visitor number and the higher your ranking. There are backlink checkers tools like Ahrefs which is a great for finding out the “domain rating” metric to compare a site to that of its competitors
- Using internal links so that you can link the content to other sites and blogs, making visitors stay for longer in the site and help boost its rankings. But too many internal links will make it look like spam so use them judiciously.
- Use social media to its maximum advantage as it will be like providing a shout out to your business and site online.
ORGANIC VS PAID SEARCH
While we talked at length about SEO and organic growth, know that paid, inorganic growth is SEM or Search Engine Marketing at its finest level.
Some attributes of organic growth are:
- Using search focusing on unpaid rankings
- Very SEO centric
- Generates an ROI that is slower in nature compared to paid searches, but it is impressive nonetheless. Some 90% of marketers say that SEO is successful.
- Costs nearly nothing to initiate and expand
- It garners credibility over time and gains in the numbers of users it attracts with the help of links.
- Pushes content makers to put out some of the best content .
- Works in tandem with social media posts when the social marketing campaign works hand in hand with organic searches.
While some of the attributes of inorganic growth are:
- Using paid search for paid rankings
- Allows users to pay for prominent slots in paid search results.
- Is very SEM centric
- Costs vary as per the campaigning budget provided. Results are guaranteed to be instantaneous. For example, advertising platforms like GoogleAds and Facebook Ads will grant approval in 2-6 days.
- Generates a greater ROI over a short period of time (because once it is paid for, the lure of PPC only gets better)
- Accumulates lots of users over a shorter period of time compared to organic search.
- Paid searches also provide the important keyword data for the SEO. With keyword data gained from the paid campaigns, new content can be created to use those keywords optimally. This is an ironic situation where the trickle down effects of paid marketing benefits the SEO for organic marketing.
HOW DOES PAID AND ORGANIC MARKETING FARE AGAINST EACH OTHER?
The end result for both the different types of marketing is to reach out and capture the audience’s attention and market share. So we can say that
Organic Marketing:
- Prioritizes content over everything else, and this includes blog posts and website landing pages. The use of SEO optimized content is pushed by the marketers who in turn promote links to the site.
- Optimizes content for better search results and earning the trust of audiences to build long term relationships with them.
- Comes at no extra cost and feels more authentic for the audience as they can rely on the information to be helpful and relevant.
- Only peeve is that the content needs to be constantly updated and it takes a while to see the results take shape when compared to paid marketing.
Paid Marketing:
- Since it is paid, the goal is to achieve an ROI faster than the traditional and slower organic marketing. Conversion and engagement rates are tracked to measure the success of the paid marketing.
- Popular platforms like GoogleAds and sponsored posts through much of social media fall into this category. PPC (pay-per-click) ads are the most common form of paid advertising, where the marketer pays a publisher everytime a link is clicked and every view of consumers is regarded as paid traffic.
- The content created by paid marketing can be used to reach consumers directly with lesser time required.
- Only peeve is that content may not be what the consumers are looking for.
Now you get to choose whether you go organic or inorganic.