According to a range of analysis from Search Engine Watch, Jupiter Media and others over of 70% of search engine users prefer organic search returns compared to sponsored listings or PPC.

Though Pay Per Click is extremely effective and popular among marketers for it's measurability, targeting, and rapid returns, still 80% of clicks at Google occur on the organic listing and not on the PPC ads. Internet users just seem to trust in the authenticity of natural listings ahead of paid for returns. It's only natural and with the major search engines investing millions in their pursuit of relevance and the evolution of the 'semantic web' who can blame them? People rarely like feeling sold to. Discovery is far more rewarding.

The Direct Marketing Association also report that 66% of marketers see search engine positioning as the most effective way to win visitors with email marketing coming in second at 54%.

With nearly 50 % of advertisers re-deploying their marketing budgets away from other programs in favour of organic SEO it would appear that awareness of the importance of top page search engine positioning is increasingly widely appreciated.

That 80% of web users abandon their search beyond the first 3 pages and approximately 30% won't scrolling past the 2nd page of results is evidence indeed that naturally listed visibility is key to successful and cost effective Internet marketing.

Effective organic SEO requires a variety of skills. A combination of SEO copywriting, web design, web development, marketing, advertising and analysis applied on and off page.

Contact Top Page TODAY to discuss how you can quickly and cost effectively grow your business by achieving high profile natural search listings.

Archie, created in 1990 by Alan Emtage, a student at McGill University in Montreal was the world's first search engine The commercial search engines that we see today began to appear in the mid 90's - Yahoo Directory in '94, LookSmart in '95, Aak Jeeves in '97, Alta Vista '95, Google was launched in 1998.

Website owners soon saw the value of having their sites ranked highly. The more visible the site the more people clicked through - clicks tuned into cash through advertising revenues, e-commerce and other commercial opportunities. Site owners looking for ways to get their sites at the top of search returns inadvertently created what has since become the multi million-dollar Search Engine Optimisation - SEO industry.

Over the recent years SEO techniques have changed repeatedly as have the search engines and the ways in which they determine which website is relevant to any given query. It's a case of poachers and gamekeepers with the search companies working hard to keep ahead of innovative webmasters and SEO marketers. Organic SEO originally consisted of using descriptive file names, page titles, and Meta descriptions. As search algorithms increased in sophistication page factors such as keyword densities grew more important. Page Ranking based upon the number and strength of inbound links became then the all important factor. As each of these search criteria stared to become abused so the algorithms were adjusted to weight other factors more. Search engines now use sophisticated and complicated algorithms. Google incorporates over 200 criteria to determine site ranking and recent developments in relation to the Semantic Web indicate that the search companies are working hard to deliver relevance.

The top 10 determining factors in search engine ranking according to SEOmoz.org are: (April 2013)

Keyword in title tags
Anchor text of inbound Links
Global popularity of the site
Age of the site
Link popularity within the site's internal link structure
Topical relevance of Inbound links to site
Link popularity of site in topical community
Keyword use in body text
Global popularity of Linking Site
Topical relationship of Linking Page

Organic SEO impacts across the board for any organisation and is a holistic approach covering website design, development, content, technology, management, input from sales, marketing, design and technicians. Organic SEO is both complex and challenging to implement. Applied well though, Organic SEO can prove an incredibly powerful way to grow your business.

Search Engine Preparation: After clarification of the business objectives, analysis and search engine preparation can begin. For example duplicate content that might cause search engines to apply ranking penalties is removed. Clean, current standard compliant HTML code is applied. We encourage a high ratio of content to code and a fast-loading, accessible search engine friendly structure. Particular attention is paid to core web programming principles. For example: the PAGE TITLE - the DESCRIPTION META TAG and internal HTML links.

Search engines very much appreciate text content. The modern semantic web rewards related content - topical islands. LSI, Latent Semantic Indexing reveals relevance with all this presented to the search engines in the form of well-written, informative, authoritative and interesting content. Sticky content of real value to visitors.

The engines also like structure, with each site page offering high quality copy using important structural elements - heading, paragraph and other HTML tags - to indicate a relevance hierarchy.

Global Link Popularity is one of the most important SEO criteria. Google, Yahoo and the other major search engines adore sites that have quality incoming links from other relevant sites. This inferred authority rub off on your profile and is something that we strive to develop through relevant linking opportunities.

Natural or organic search engine optimisation improves your profile, and site ranking it benefits your overall Internet marketing campaign and grows your reputation and business. Site value increases, improved HTML code increase usability and conversions. High quality content informs you target about product and increased link popularity evolves the site authority - Natural SEO - a virtuous SEO circle.

Contact Top Page to find out how we can grow your business by raising your web profile and your site to the top of the search engines.

Contact us NOW on Tel: +44 (0)203 389 5771 for more information on
blog creation, blog curation and blog management as part of your SEO.
Author - Chris Horner

What is SEO - Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (SERP) - including Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines