What Is Organic SEO? And Why It Matters: The Beginner’s Guide

While search engines have paid and unpaid listings organic SEO is all about ranking in the unpaid listings.

But it’s not easy. There are challenges that can stop you getting that sweet free organic traffic.

In this post, we break down the different elements you’ll see in SERPs (search engine results pages), how to rank higher, and challenges of ranking in organic listings.

Let’s get into it.

What is organic SEO?

Organic SEO is the practice of ranking your website and its pages in unpaid search results. It’s commonly just referred to as SEO for short.

While paid listings will provide you with instant traffic at a price, ranking in the unpaid listings takes time and effort. 

While you can pay for SEO services to speed up the process, you have to earn the right to rank. 

That’s not to say the most deserving content always ranks. It doesn’t. But you do have to work hard to get your site ranking.

Here’s an example from Google:

what is organic seo example

Yes, that’s right. Organic listings are almost below the fold now but that’s a discussion for another time. Or an argument.

SERP elements

To fully appreciate the impact that SEO brings to your website, you need to understand what elements are displayed when a user searches.

What we would typically see is the most relevant pages to the search query. This is subjective, of course. And based on numerous ranking factors.

However, organic search results have undergone countless changes through the years.

Nowadays, organic listings have been pushed down the page in favor of other SERP elements. More ads. AI Overviews, etc.

Next, we’ll take a look at some of the common SERP elements you may see. They won’t appear for all searches, however. 

AI overviews

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Overviews have been met with a lot of criticism but Google seems intent on forcing them upon the world. Despite pillaging the information for content creators and pushing out some whacky answers.

Well, I say whacky but they’ve been flat out life threatening. Glue in pizza, eating rocks, running with scissors, etc. 

Anyway, as the name implies, it provides searchers with an AI-generated answer to their query, a way for Google to try to provide you with the necessary information right away to speed up your search process.

ai overviews google

The generated text comes in different formats, the most common being the unordered lists (61%).

In a different study, 12.4% of the 8,000 analyzed keywords by Advanced Web Ranking contained an AI Overview.

That’s not a lot, but I’m sure we’ll see Google continue to push these AI Overviews even when its dangerous or makes very little sense for the end user.

Paid listings

By now, you should know that paid listings aren’t part of organic SEO. 

But we need to talk about them because they’re relevant. 

The most common paid search ads on SERPs are ones launched using Google Ads.

They look identical to pages that appear on organic SEO, except that the pages are tagged with “Sponsored.” – at least they are as I write this. Google has played around with how these listings are named/displayed.

paid listings google

Other less common paid listing types on SERPs include the Local Service Ads.

Despite appearing on top of SERPs, paid ads often receive the short end of the stick.

Search ads have a 6.42% CTR, which pales in comparison to the 38.16% of clicks the page that appears on the first place SERPs receive (as of September 2024).

So, it appears that people don’t like clicking on paid ads.

However, this doesn’t mean that paid search is inferior to organic search. Ads appear immediately on top after allotting a budget for it, something that you can’t say about organic SEO (more about this later).

Local SEO

Next, we have the local pack, which contains the most relevant businesses for your query. These should only appear as part of a local search.

Each business features the star ranking (customer review), business type, testimonials, and other information.

local seo google maps

On the right is the map with pins showing the locations of these businesses.

Clicking on the pins opens their Google Maps listing to provide users with additional information about each.

This SERP feature only shows up on local keywords (search queries that include a location, like city and state).

Various studies show that 40-44% of people click on businesses in the local 3-pack.

Local SEO applies only to local businesses. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t target organic SEO as it helps them increase their search engine visibility (by targeting global keywords) and generating more traffic.

Organic listings

Last but not least are the organic listings.

These pages appear based on how relevant they are to whatever the user is searching for. There are a bunch of other ranking factors at work, however.

organic listings rubiks cube

Organic listings still get a lot of traffic but Google is adding more SERP features to more queries which keeps users on Google. Then there’s the AI Overviews. These have definitely taken a chunk out of traffic that would normally go to pages ranking in the organic listings.

That’s concerning.

Think about it:

If AI generates the exact answers people are looking for, then what’s the point of browsing through the different web pages in search rankings?

But here’s the other side of the coin:

Where do you think AI generates its answers from?

From pages appearing on SERPs, of course!

AI Overview links back to the page where they got the information. Exactly how they do this in the future is difficult to say. I’m sure we’ll see this approach evolve.

organic listings sky blue

According to one study, 33.4% of links attributed to AI Overview come from the top 10 pages of search results.

This gives you more incentive to appear on top of organic search rankings!

How to rank in organic listings

Despite the changes in SERPs, implementing the best organic SEO strategies is still in your best interest, allowing your site to generate tons of traffic from search engines like Google.

However, keep in mind that your job isn’t getting any easier. In addition to the fierce competition you’re up against, you have to worry about the SERP features above that might steal clicks from your page.

So, you have one option: 

Level up your organic SEO efforts to leapfrog over your competitors and encourage users to click on your web page instead!

Here’s how to do it:

Conduct keyword research

Finding the right keywords to target on your site is key to your SEO success.

This means you must develop a deliberate approach for scouring through various search terms and identifying which ones to prioritize.

Thankfully, keyword research tools make the entire process much easier.

A tool like SE Ranking will help streamline your keyword research process.

Using its Keyword Research tool, type in your seed keyword or topic on the search bar.

On the next page, you’ll see keyword metrics such as search volume, difficulty, trend, and others.

conduct keyword research overview

This information will help you identify which keywords to focus on for your upcoming campaign.

Ideally, you want to find keywords with high search ranking and low keyword difficulty.

This way, you can rank on top sooner and generate more organic traffic from SERPs.

Going back to SE Ranking, click on the detailed report to find keywords related to your query.

conduct keyword research detailed report

From here, you can organize the results from highest to lowest search volume or keyword difficulty.

You can also filter the range of monthly search volume or keyword competitiveness to show in the results.

There’s also an option to filter questions from the list by clicking the Questions tab.

conduct keyword research questions filter

This is perfect if you want to write informative articles about the subject to showcase your expertise and knowledge.

While question keywords don’t have lots of search volume, they have much lower competition, allowing you to rank for these terms with relative ease.

You can export the keywords to a sheet, organize them in your plan, and proceed to the next step.

Create optimized content

Producing well-written content that is topically relevant to your targeted keywords is another big factor in ranking high on Google and other search engines.

Once you’re ready to optimize your website for the search queries you researched, it’s best to use a content optimization tool like Frase.

It’ll gather relevant keywords based on NLP (natural language processing). This ensures that you know what words and phrases to include in your content.

create optimized content frase

These words and phrases are pulled from competitors that are already ranking.

You’ll then need to include these terms in your content as naturally as possible. Doing so helps you create on-topic content that aligns with search intent, and is relevant to users.

It’ll also help you avoid keyword stuffing. You’ll be able to easily see whether you’re mentioning a word or phrase too many times. You can then remove it and replace it with something else.

If you have an SE Ranking account, you can use their version of this tool. You can’t go wrong with either.

create optimized content se ranking

Another great thing about these tools is you can create a brief by manually researching the headers of the most relevant pages about your target keyword. Or you can leverage AI to generate the outline for you.

create optimized content generate outline

This feature helps speed up the content creation process and ensures that you use information from existing pages to create equally great – if not better – content than your competitors!

Observe on-page SEO best practices

Observing on-page optimization practices is another organic search strategy to incorporate into your campaign.

If you’re running a WordPress website, install and activate an SEO plugin that’ll help you oversee if the various on-page factors on your site pages are observed properly.

We use SEOPress for this.

After downloading it, go to a page, enter its target keyword in the Content analysis section of the text editor, and generate analysis.

The plugin will show you how optimized the page is for the keyword and what you must do to improve its optimization score further.

observe on page seopress

Here, SEOPress will prompt you to optimize your page titles, indicate the meta tags of each, indicate image alt tags, include internal and external links, and more!

While you don’t have to implement all of its suggestions, you should at least observe most of them. Doing so ensures that search engines can better understand the page and index it higher on SERPs, allowing you to generate higher search traffic in the process.

Note: The content analysis feature in SEOPress isn’t as advanced as what Frase and SE Ranking can do, but it helps you to tick off a few other important things. And it takes care of a lot of technical SEO stuff on the back-end of your site. Things like OpenGraph tags, control over indexing of taxonomies, XML sitemap generation, etc.

Acquire authoritative backlinks

Once you’ve optimized your site for variables you can control, it’s time to optimize it for factors you can’t control.

Off-page SEO strategies, also known as link-building tactics, can help push your website to the top of SERPs.

The goal is to acquire high-quality backlinks from sites relevant to your industry or niche.

Search engines view these links as recommendations. The more backlinks from trustworthy websites pointing to your site, the more authoritative your site appears to search engines.

The fact that high-quality sites trust your site enough to link to you gives search engines confidence in ranking your website higher in organic search results.

However, link building is a double-edged sword. How you develop your off-page SEO campaign will determine your site’s ability to rank on search results pages.

Google will typically just ignore most spammy links but it offers some guidance on what it considers link spam. In some cases, they do issue manual penalties.

acquire authoritative backlinks link spam

There are a lot of sites on the web that are pure spam and link to sites randomly. Google’s getting smarter at identifying these. So, you generally won’t need to worry about those.

Just make sure that your link building strategy focuses on legit links that you’d want whether Google existed or not. Generally, these will be the links that refer the most traffic.

Also, acquiring a backlink is no easy task since you have little control over whether the site owner will place a link to your site.

That said, you can start off with the easier links first. Known as foundational or pillow links.

These links point to your site from social media profiles, trusted online directories, and others.

Pillow links are easy to build (you can create the profiles and insert the links in the bio), come from high-authority sites, and are penalty-resistant.

More importantly, you extend your website reach to these online properties, which is part of building a recognizable brand that’s vital in today’s organic search landscape. This is important because relying on Google for traffic provides a single point of failure for any business.

Next, you must tap into more complex link building tactics to help establish your site’s authoritativeness.

The best place to begin is by spying on your competitors’ link profiles.

SE Ranking has a feature called Backlink Gap Analyzer. It’ll allow you to find the backlinks your competitors have that you don’t have.

acquire authoritative backlinks backlink gap analyzer

Click on the drop-down menu to see the link’s context and the anchor text used.

acquire authoritative backlinks drop down menu

Just as important, you can prioritize the links from websites with high Domain Trust (DT).

From there, you can work out a strategy to acquire links from these sites.

Focusing on acquiring links from high-authority domains will have a positive impact on your website traffic coming from search engines.

Organic SEO challenges

At this point, we’ve covered organic SEO techniques that will help your website appear at the top of SERPs.

But you also have to recognize that SEO is a marathon, not a sprint.

Executing the tactics above won’t make your site appear on the first page of Google search immediately.

Below are things you must consider to help you temper your expectations and understand what it takes to win at SEO over the long-term.

Results take time

Paid search ads give instant results but the time it takes to rank in unpaid listings can vary wildly.

One thing is for sure: they can’t come soon enough.

For new sites, it’ll take 12-18 months before they will see positive results (when the strategy is executed right). They have to prove to search engines that they deserve to rank by working twice as hard to gain their trust before showing up on SERPs

For authoritative sites, since they have already proven their expertise and trustworthiness to search engines, they can usually rank new pages much sooner (3-9 months).

These numbers are relative, so always track your site’s keyword rankings using a tool like SE Ranking.

results take time se ranking

You can also glean some useful insights by monitoring your site’s performance via Google Search Console. It’ll give you insights about keywords your pages rank for, average rankings, click volume, impressions, etc.

results take time performance search results

But you must understand that search engines process billions of new and old pages daily. You also have to factor in changes in search algorithms, which dictates factors to consider when ranking sites on SERPs.

All these factors and more make ranking for organic SEO an arduous process.

However, once you rank on Google search, you can potentially stay up there for a long time.

As long as you execute a robust SEO strategy, you will reap the rewards of your efforts.

Tweak your strategy to your industry

Your organic SEO strategy shouldn’t be a cut and paste. What works in some verticals won’t work in others.

To determine which strategy to develop for your website, you need to look at your top competitors as they dictate how SEO is done in your industry.

Some industries (gambling) use black hat SEO tactics like private blog networks (PBNs), parasite SEO (getting content with affiliate links published on big publication sites like Forbes), and others. But those are high risk strategies.

This doesn’t mean that Google has double standards regarding certain niches. But the fact remains that it works for some brands, which means more leeway for brands in the same industry to employ the same questionable but effective tactics.

Other high-ticket industries (legal) need an aggressive SEO strategy.

Aside from executing a well-oiled link-building campaign that generates a lot of high quality backlinks over time (at a local and national level), sites in the legal sector need to develop a local SEO strategy.

This includes optimizing their Google Business Profile (GBP), building local citations, cleaning up old citations, and more. All of these things are in addition to your regular organic SEO strategy.

The key here is researching and understanding the top domains in your niche and see what works for them. From here, you’ll know the SEO tactics and strategies you need to implement on your website.

Adapting to algorithm changes

The biggest obstacle site owners have with organic SEO is Google itself.

While there are other search engines you can optimize for, Google has a monopoly over the search sector. Its market share is somewhere in the region of 85-90% on average.

So, when Google makes changes in how it ranks websites, people tend to pay very close attention.

The March 2024 Update is one recent example of algorithm changes that fundamentally impacted SERPs.

Lots of content and niche websites that were making bank before no longer dominate search results.

In their place are authoritative websites and UGC sites like Quora, Medium, and Reddit, which appear on the first page of target keywords.

So, it’s important to adapt and work towards overcoming these changes so you can rank at the top of Google Search again.

To be fair, this happened before in 2012 when the Penguin update torched websites acquiring links with overly optimized anchor text.

The most challenging part is that Google will often say they did one thing whilst doing something different. Remember the Helpful Content Update? That wasn’t about helpful content at all.

The path through these algorithm changes is building a brand that relies less and less on Google. If organic traffic matters to your business, keep pushing forwards but also explore alternative traffic sources.

Right now, there’s no clear path toward recovery, except that you must strive to build an authoritative brand with products and services to sell. This sounds like running a business because it is—Google rewards sites that treat SEO as part of an overarching digital marketing strategy.

Conclusion

Your organic search strategies dictate your success in Google search results

By following the tactics mentioned above, you can maximize your clicks for higher search traffic. 

More importantly, implementing the techniques as part of your broader marketing strategy helps you build a brand that Google will love even more.