You’ve probably heard the term “Organic SEO” before, but what is it exactly? Simply put, organic SEO is search engine optimization that is natural and unpaid. It means that you’re improving your website’s search engine ranking without using pay-per-click or any other paid methods of improving your website’s visibility.
This differs slightly from onsite SEO.
While organic SEO includes link building and other techniques that take place off of your website, onsite SEO is exactly what it sounds like: Search engine optimization that involves only your own website. It involves your website design, your web content and almost every other aspect of your website.
Organic SEO includes onsite SEO, but the two things are not the same. As a website copywriter I spend a lot of my time focusing on onsite search engine optimization. Other Internet promotion methods such as social media marketing come into play as well, but onsite SEO is a big focus for me.
Onsite SEO Tips
Website optimization is a key tool in improving your website’s search engine ranking. There are a number of different factors that contribute to your site’s ranking, but here are a few of them:
- Site navigation and structure: Search engines need to be able to crawl your website and find all of your content easily. They also need to know exactly what each page of your site is about.
- Organization: Like with your navigation and structure, if your website is organized with categories and clear page titles, search engines will be able to classify it better
- Keyword usage: The words you use in your text matter. However, that doesn’t mean you should fill your site with a bunch of keywords. Write naturally and create content that users will enjoy reading and that search engines will be able to recognize.
The key when creating website content and optimizing your onsite text is to make sure that search engines can tell what your page is about. Having clear titles and headings on your page will make it easier for a search engine to know what topics are being discussed on that page. Including key words and phrases will accomplish the same goal.
Modern search engines are smart and they understand how people consume content. When you are writing for the web, make sure that you keep your human visitors in mind and that you don’t just write for search engines. There isn’t much point to drawing traffic to your website if the site itself is useless for visitors once they get there.
If a person can tell what your page is about at a glance, so can a search engine.
Try to be as descriptive as possible. Rather than writing “This is a list of our products” try writing “Our Blue Widget Line-up.” That way users and search engines will know that this particular page of content is about “blue widgets” and classify your website with all other pages that have information on blue widgets.
Onsite SEO is incredibly important and you should always think about optimizing your copy for the web no matter what you are writing. For more information on onsite SEO techniques or to receive a free website review and consultation, please contact me. I can work with you to develop compelling, interesting and search engine friendly content for your website.