Principles of Organic Search

Written By: Adam Dince

Introduction
As organic search has evolved, it has matured from the practice of loading content with keywords to a data-informed process of creating high quality, relevant and accessible content that fosters organic propagation throughout the Web.

How Rankings Work

In order to understand how organic search works, it’s important to understand ranking algorithms. Each search engine has its own proprietary ranking algorithm that consists of many complex and changing variables. Google® claims to include over 200 (mostly secretive) factors in its ranking algorithm that change on a regular basis.

Of course, search engines have provided insight in to some of the important factors that power the algorithms. Furthermore, many search experts have worked diligently to test and prove hypotheses. Below is a simple formula and table that outlines a basic organic search algorithmic formula.

And while algorithms change, updates are typically refinements aimed at improving the quality of its already existing ranking factors.

Explaining the Algorithm Factors

Content:

Relevance:
Relevance is the extent to which on-page content is relevant to the terms consumers, prospects and customers use in their search queries. The greater the content relevance, the more likely your pages are to return high in organic search results.

Thematic Consistence:
Thematic consistence is the extent to which a single content theme is preserved on a Web page. Imagine a newspaper. If someone were to ask you what the main theme of the front page is, it might be difficult to articulate because there are competing themes. There might be a story about the economy, a separate story about an international conflict and a few other smaller stories that do not relate to each other.

Now imagine that you are reading a page that was entirely focused on a specific story. That page would be much easier to explain because it’s much more focused. This holds true for Web pages as well. The more consistent a singular theme is throughout a Web page, the more likely search engines will be able to understand the main purpose of the content.

Content Accessibility:
One of the most important pieces of the content puzzle is ensuring that search engine spiders are able to access and crawl all content present on page.

A search engine spider crawl is similar to a car driving down the road. If it runs into a dead end, it looks for another route. If it still can’t find a way to get through the barrier, it will give up on arriving at the final destination.

This means that a Web site should be developed with Google Webmaster Guidelines and SEO technical requirements in place. If a site has been created without those two considerations, an SEO technical audit should be conducted and obstacles to organic search should be remediated appropriately.

Content Architecture:
Another key element of building content the right way is ensuring it’s properly structured on your Web page. This includes making sure Web pages and CMS page/component templates include the appropriate markup/HTML to emphasize the main points of your content. Furthermore, content architecture also includes the implementation of schemas that provide search engines with more information and context related to on-page assets.

Level of Quality:
Since its inception, Google has promoted the practice of creating content for users and not for search engines. Webmasters should only be publishing content that provides real value to its visitors. Historically, one of the biggest challenges to search engines has been Web sites that launch content with the sole purpose of ranking well in organic search results. As a result, search engines have indexed a significant amount of Web pages that contain thin content, overloaded with highly demanded keywords. To combat this tactic, Google has updated its algorithm (the Panda Update) to reward sites that provide valuable content and penalize sites that do not. To learn more about Google’s content quality guidelines, please visit http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html.

Internal Link Architecture:
While developing accessible, strong and relevant content is vital to performing well via the organic search channel, it is important to ensure that contextually relevant pages link to each other with optimized anchor text (the clickable words within a link). A Web site’s internal link architecture helps search engines understand relationships and semantics between different pages.

Content Asset Diversification & Distribution:
Peoples’ preference for consuming content is similar to how they consume food: they have difference preferences at different moments. Sometimes they prefer reading an article, other times they may wish to view a video or they may prefer an infographic, which is one of the most popular forms on content consumption.

Since consumer preference varies, it is important to offer up content in a variety of formats, curated in multiple locations throughout the Web. This ensures that consumers have a better chance at both finding and engaging with your content.
Furthermore, search engine algorithms parse digital assets differently. Universal “blended” organic search results for both Google and Bing (Web pages, videos, images, etc.) appear as stand-alones. Each type of asset competes against similar types for visibility. As an example: videos compete with other videos for visibility and not against textual Web pages. This means that the more diverse your content assets are, the more opportunity you have to be found and return in organic search results.

Authority:
While search engines want to return Web pages that are relevant to a user query, they also want to make sure that the relevant results are trustworthy. For instance, anyone could attempt to create a Web page about credit cards, fill it with relevant content (that may be factually incorrect) with the purpose of ranking well in search results. How do search engines know if a particular Web page is serving up the most appropriate and trustworthy content to users?

Search authority, often referred to as equity, PageRankTM, trust, etc. is a signal that search engines use to determine whether or not a Web page is more trusted than other pages competing for visibility.

Thus, it is vital to ensure that you’re building the right content while also building trust/equity with search engines at the same time. Below are some of the factors that contribute to positive search authority:

# of Inbound Links:
Links from third party Websites act as votes of confidence in your favor. The more inbound links pointing to a Web page, the more authority search engines will attribute to it. Similar to high school, the more people that like you, the more popular you are considered. The same principle can be applied to your Web pages.

However, there are plenty of Webmasters and SEOs that have succeeded in gaming search engine algorithms by buying links, requesting links from low-quality sites, engaging with link farms, etc. Search engines do not like being gamed and they prefer that authority be built organically. In fact, these types of tactics are discouraged in both Google and Bing Webmaster Guidelines.

Furthermore, search engines have released updates and filters to their algorithms to identify sites that follow these inorganic practices.

Essentially, your content, user-experience and creative should be meaningful enough to inspire third-party sites link to you without having to engage in “black hat” or disingenuous linking strategies.

# of Unique Linking Domains:
While the number of inbound links is an important signal, this number can be gamed as well. For example, one link on a blog roll located in the global right-hand side bar may result in thousands of inbound links from that one site, thus artificially inflating the number of links actually pointing to a page. To combat this, search engines also look at the number of unique domains that link to your site. Imagine the scenario below:

Which scenario would provide the most authority to a Web site? If all links within the three scenarios come from trusted sites, Scenario C.

Authority of Inbound Links:
Not all links are created equal and search engines are keenly aware of this. Think of it from a user perspective. Let’s look at two slightly different scenarios:

1. Say that you’ve Google’d term “how to jailbreak an iPhone” and you find a result that leads you to a sketchy tech forum. Within the trail of content, you find a link to a blog site that you’ve never heard of before. Would you be inclined click? Would you trust the link?

2. Say that you’ve Google’d term “how to jailbreak an iPhone” and you find a result from Mashable.com which provides a link to jailbreak instructions on TechCrunch. Would you feel more comfortable clicking that link? Would you find it more trustworthy?
Search engines approach link landscapes in a similar way. If the page that links to you is highly trusted, you will inherit a portion of that trust. If the inbound link comes from a site that is not trusted, it provides little to no value at all.

Search engines approach link landscapes in a similar way. If the page that links to you is highly trusted, you will inherit a portion of that trust. If the inbound link comes from a site that is not trusted, it provides little to no value at all.

Length of Time Links Exist:
This is one of the most overlooked aspects of authority. Many Webmasters/SEOs get excited when new inbound links are discovered. However, much of that enthusiasm dies down when there isn’t a correlated lift in visibility.

The length of time an inbound link exists is similar to a personal relationship. A couple who has been dating for a few days has not yet established a solid relationship. However, the longer a couple stays together, the stronger the relationship becomes. The same principle applies to links. A brand-new link will get your site a little bit of equity, but the longer the link exists, the stronger and more authority your pages accumulate.

Social Media Signals:
Traditionally, a majority of search authority is driven from the inbound link signals covered in the previous points. However, with the rise and prominence of social media, search engines have embraced the personal social signal as well. Currently, Google+ signals have the most influence over organic search results. However, many predict that in the future Facebook®, Twitter™, LinkedIn®, Pinterest® and other social network sites will strongly impact organic search visibility and authority.

Multi-Channel Approach:

To help increase the likelihood of garnering links and social signals in a highly competitive vertical such as financial services, it is important to diversify your marketing tactics. Whether it be e-mail marketing, paid search advertisements, display, etc.., the more you diversify your marketing channels, the more likely you are to foster organic sharing of content and inbound links from very relevant sources.

Summary
Organic search is both an art and a science. It requires a long-term commitment to building accessible quality content that generates important signals that search engines can use as authority indicators. Unlike paid search, the organic search construct does not allow a pay-for-placement or pay-per-click model. However, once you’ve succeeded in organic search, results are long lasting with the proper maintenance.