Organic (echo: organic, organic, organic)… It’s magical. It’s mystical… it’s damn hard to explain, is what it is. I think that’s why, when you search for “what is organic SEO content”, you don’t get much back. Oh, yeah, except for that article we wrote that one time.
Organic Search
In search engine optimization, organic means not paid. Paid search and organic search are polar opposites. You don’t pay for ads. You don’t pay for links. You don’t pay to stay visible. Organic optimization doesn’t focus on content to the exclusion of everything else, but content could be described as the main focus.
Organic Content
Organic content has been optimized for both visitor and search engine. Sounds like double-speak, doesn’t it – but that is the basic definition.
It’s crafted to invite discussion, create interest, inform or otherwise influence readers. At the same time, it is carefully created – by various magical, mystical ways – to gain the attention of the search engines.
Magical, Mystical Tour WHAT?
Mushrooms. Of the “seeing the world differently” variety – and no, I’m not on them, but bear with me.
Understanding Your Visitors
The best organic content is the type that sticks – and the type that sticks is the type that sees the world a little differently. For site content, you (or your copywriters, whatever) have to step into the world of your customer. For blog content, you have to read the mind of your visitors. Walk with me:
The way people search is changing from noun to verb. Where they may have searched for simply play set a few years ago, they might now search for things like:
- Play set for sale
- Play set sales
- Play sets on sale
- Buy play set
- What’s the best play set to buy?
- Play set recalls
- Play set reviews
You, oh mighty webmaster, must become a mind reader. You have to step into the mind of your target market and decide what they’re searching for (and thus, what terms to target). Out of all that, you also have to figure out which key terms will be your biggest moneymakers. Then, you have to categorize your chosen terms based on intent (phew!)
Understanding the Search Engines
You also have to try to think like an algorithm, which takes a lot of mushrooms. Okay, it also takes an understanding of how relevance works, but definitely mushrooms.
It’s not good enough, for search engines, to name your page Play Sets. It used to be (sort of), but people started spamming the crap out of it and ruined it for all of us.
Search engines use relevance to determine whether a site should show up in a particular search. Then they use how relevant (along with 1000+ other algorithms) to decide where you should rank. So, let’s say you want to rank for “play sets”, get traffic and convert people to your brand. How do you do that?
- Create a highly relevant, quality page with strong calls-to-action
- Page title and description (search snippet) matches the content on the page
- Allow two or three links to relevant, interior pages in the content, using a relevant key term as the anchor text
- Write blogs, articles or whitepapers, and link to the target page when it seems natural to do so
- Guest post to topical sites and, if allowed, link back to the page using relevant anchor text
- Use images where needed and fill in the alt attribute
- Sacrifice SEO before you sacrifice the content quality
Note: The alt attribute stands “alternative text”. Whatever content you have in this attribute will show to those who have images turned off. Don’t waste this space.
Conclusion
If you’re trying to write organic SEO content, ask yourself, “Does this read naturally?” In other words, do your keywords stand out more than other content? Do the links stand out in an unnatural way (think double-lined, green links with pop-up ads)? When you click to your site, are you bombarded by your key terms?
Next time you want to hop on some SEO mushrooms, type up organic content and electrify your readers, keep these things in mind. What tips do you have for writing great organic content?
