What is organic SEO and why should bloggers care?

Search engine optimization is something that most bloggers find scary. Especially given the frequent algorithm updates by the search engines, organic SEO has become an alien concept to most bloggers.

The fact however is, the basics are always the same. And the frequent SEO algorithm updates by search engine giants like Google has only made it a lot easier for genuine bloggers to shine in search results.

Let’s talk more about how easy it is to please search engines these days after all these major updates later in this post.

For now I would like to focus more on the “organic” SEO bit. I wanted to raise this topic because most bloggers have completely wrong notions about SEO and to be precise, organic SEO.

Let’s dig in.

What is “organic” SEO?

What’s “organic”? – Organic is something (usually food) that is prepared using natural matter. Organic food is free from synthesized or artificial stuff.

I am no food expert so I have said what’s organic in layman’s terms –  I don’t know the technical terms but I am sure you got my point.

Organic food contains natural ingredients – either direct ingredients or ingredients derived from natural sources like animal or plant derivatives.

Whatever it is, organic doesn’t contain anything artificial or synthesized. That’s the most important thing that we need to pay attention right now.

Let’s see organic in terms of SEO.

Organic SEO, just like organic food, should contain only natural ingredients; more importantly, it shouldn’t have any artificial or manipulated stuff.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Organic SEO = no unnatural or manipulated stuff” quote=”Organic SEO = no unnatural or manipulated stuff” theme=”style4″]

Gone are the days where you can cook up a quick website and do all the unnatural tricks to get it on page one in search engine results. That is not organic.

All the black hat techniques and all the links that are “built” via unnatural methods are manipulative stuff. They are artificial things that used to work. But they don’t work anymore as we all know.

Moreover, even if they work now, it is not organic or natural. In fact I’m so glad all the Google updates happened.

Otherwise the web would be full of spammy, useless sites gaining power because of their unnatural tactics. Anyone who can artificially manipulate rankings can be successful at their business no matter if they offer real value or not!

And this is certainly not good, right?

This is why bloggers, in particular, should care about organic SEO. You can only provide value AND stay in business successfully if you go the organic route.

The shady black hat SEO techniques might work for a short time – but it won’t take longer for people to smell your spam; and search engines will detect your shady techniques and come at you even faster than people!

Apart from fearing about whether you will be slapped by the Panda or a Penguin update think about this for a while – you are probably doing an online business and your blog is your marketing tool. Any business will flourish only if it offers value.

If a business doesn’t offer value and if it still manages to rank well in search engines, it might do well for a while. But this unnatural trick won’t work for the long term.

And if you are serious about building a long term business, you should go the organic route.

And yes, you should care enough about doing organic SEO! This matters a lot!

Organic SEO is long term

Just as I mentioned now, organic SEO is something that works for long term. There are two ways to look at this “long term” characteristic of organic SEO

Organic SEO takes a while….

Yup! This is why most bloggers get frustrated about organic SEO. They do some quick on page optimization and stick to the strict (yet very reasonable) rules of Google for a while.

They wait for a few days and if they don’t see a rush in the organic traffic, they give up!

Organic SEO doesn’t work that way. It usually takes a while for the results to show up. I know some bloggers managed to reap the benefits in a very short time – but that takes a combined effort.

Those bloggers most probably put in extra effort, time and money by outsourcing certain tasks.

And perhaps they also adopted other marketing strategies aggressively in order to reap those results in a very short time.

Think about publishing long, in-depth, high quality posts almost everyday – more quality content = a nice traffic and income boost.

Think about reaching out in terms of blog commenting, guest blogging, and on social media – that’s a lot of extra exposure.

If you combine all marketing strategies along with organic SEO and do them in an aggressive manner, sure you can reap benefits in a very short time.

But I am sure you are like me and I am not someone who can write long, in-depth posts everyday. Nor do I have the budget or willingness to outsource all my content creation.

And I am (almost) one woman army – I do all the content, marketing and other mandatory stuff involved in my business myself.

I have a manager who helps me with administrative and some tech bit, but that’s about it.

So I can only handle what I can handle. I am sure you fall into that category too!

The only option you and I have is to understand the fact that organic SEO takes a while to “pick up” and show results. And that shouldn’t stop or derail you from caring about the same!

[clickToTweet tweet=”Its important to understand that organic SEO is long term” quote=”Its important to understand that organic SEO is long term” theme=”style4″]

By the way, if you want to create great content for your business on a regular basis, get your hands on my content creation course: How to create killer content for your business?

Then it becomes almost autopilot…

Yes, it might seem to be very hard initially. It might seem to take an infinite amount of time for the results to show up. But once it picks up, you can reap the benefits almost on autopilot.

I say “almost” – so it doesn’t mean you can stop doing SEO at some point. I didn’t mean that.

You should continue to optimize your content for search engines in an ethical way even if you are getting loads of search engine traffic.

However once it picks up, you will see substantial results in terms of organic SEO traffic and your site will have a much better organic ranking overall. And then, even for small efforts you can see big results. That’s what I meant.

Organic SEO is easy and risk-free these days

This is one of the most convincing reasons as to why bloggers should care about organic SEO. Organic is easy – much easier than all the unnatural methods.

And it is risk free too! If you don’t adopt any shady SEO techniques you don’t have to worry about any Google updates that penalize those shady techniques.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Organic SEO is easy and risk free!” quote=”Organic SEO is easy and risk free!” theme=”style4″]

I don’t mean that your site will be Penguin or Panda proof 100% – I could say that, but who knows what an automatic update will do?

Almost all of Google’s SEO updates so far have hit a good portion of genuine websites that were carrying out only white hat SEO techniques and are of good quality. That is mostly accidental hit and usually those sites came back to position within a few weeks.

So you need not worry about being hit by a search engine update. In fact, you don’t have to worry about anything else as long as you are Mr./Ms. clean.

Plus, its easy.

With organic SEO best practices you don’t have to lead a hectic blogging life. It takes lot of time, effort, energy and even money to implement shady black hat SEO techniques.

You will have to invest in software that help you do this – there are software that can help you

It is terrible to have to do all the shady stuff and it is much better (and easier) to just get the basics right and be useful to people.

I hope you get the point.

Conclusion: Do you care to do organic SEO?

I do! I find it a lot easier and much rewarding.

I don’t say that you should fear search engines like Google and play by their rules. You don’t have to if you don’t care about getting organic traffic for your blog.

But if you want the search engines to grace you with organic traffic and if you want to have a very good online presence, you should play by their rules.

Plus given that all you have to do is to find how to provide quality to your readers/prospects/customers and deliver the same, doesn’t it make your life easy?

I don’t want to complicate my life as a blogger by spending time and money and risking it all in doing black hat SEO techniques.

I want to build a stable and useful online business that will stay robust for a very long time. I don’t want a roller coaster ride! And I want to keep things simple!

What about you? Do you care to do organic SEO?