What is Organic SEO: 6 Best Strategies to Improve Organic Search Rankings in 2024

If you’re running a website or an online business – you know how important it is to generate traffic.

Most businesses spend a ton of money on various channels, like social media, influencer marketing, PPC ads, etc., to attract website visitors.

But… what if you’re looking for a FREE traffic source that sends you the HIGHEST quality of visitors? Here’s where organic SEO comes into play.

This free guide is exclusively for you if you want to increase your organic traffic. In this guide, you’ll discover;

• What is organic SEO, along with its benefits
• How we use SEO to drive over 2.6 million visits a year to our website
• Top 6 best practices to attract high-quality visitors from search and more

Are you ready? Let’s jump into the details.

What is Organic Search? Everything You Need to Know

What is organic SEO?

Organic SEO refers to the process of optimizing your website for search engines to generate more traffic and leads. It is one of the most preferred ways for website owners because it sends free traffic.

There are a ton of benefits of organic search, including;

• It’s the cost-effective way to generate more leads and sales for your website
• Sends you highly qualified visitors from search engines
• It improves your website’s organic visibility for many keywords 
• SEO gets more clicks than PPC ads, and the list goes on

Organic SEO can be achieved by:

• Finding relevant keyword phrases
• Optimizing your website pages with helpful and relevant content
• Building quality backlinks, and more

6 Organic Search Best Practices that Work In 2024

Let’s now dig into the best organic SEO practices to grow your website’s search traffic in 2024 and beyond.

1. It starts with strategic keyword research

Keyword research helped our site BloggersPassion’s traffic grow.

Have a look at our traffic report;

As you can see above, we generated over 2.2 million visits to our website in 2023.

Do you know the reason we get so much search traffic? Keyword research!

The key here is to find and use long-tail keywords. We often use relevant long-tail keywords that have fewer searches. 

In simple words, long-tail keywords contain three or more words. They are more specific than short-tail keywords and tend to have fewer searches. 

What does it mean? It means ranking for long-tail keywords (like “best WordPress plugins for fitness blogs”) is easier than short-tail keywords (like “WordPress plugins”).

So if you’re looking to grow your organic search traffic, target long-tail keywords.

Here are some of the tools you can use;

• Answer the Public
• Semrush (highly recommended)
• KWFinder

Here’s a FREE guide on finding long-tail keywords if you’re a beginner.

2. Create content that satisfies search intent

Gone are the days when you rank for multiple keywords by keyword stuffing.

Google no longer gives importance to how many times a keyword is used. It only cares about the “INTENT.”

You need to understand the different types of search intent. 

There are three main types of search intent:

• Informational: People are looking for information about a topic (for example: how to sell on Amazon)
• Navigational: People are looking for a specific website or page (for example: Amazon login)
• Transactional: People are looking to buy a product or service (for example: Amazon offers on iPhones)

Are you getting it?

Make sure to conduct in-depth keyword research to identify the right keywords along with their intent. You can use tools like Semrush to find the keyword intent.

Here’s what it looks like;

As you can see above, the Semrush keyword magic tool shows you a column called “Intent,” which helps you quickly find different types of intent, including;

• N (Navigational keywords)
• C (Commercial keywords)
• I (Informative keywords)
• T (Transactional keywords) 

Once you know the intent behind each keyword, create content accordingly.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the content types suitable for different intent.

• Navigational keywords are used to find a specific website or webpage.
• You can create how-to guides, tutorials, and blog posts to target informative keywords.
• You can create reviews or comparisons to target commercial keywords.
• You can use transaction-oriented phrases like buy, discount, trial, etc., to target transactional keywords.

Check out our FREE guide on types of search queries to find more details about the above keywords.

3. The importance of internal links

Most people focus ONLY on building links from external websites and often forget about internal links.

Yes, external links are extremely important. But you shouldn’t ignore internal links.

Why?

Internal links are an essential part of SEO, as they help search engines understand the structure of your website. They also pass the link juice (or link authority) between your internal pages.

Here are some internal linking best practices for SEO:

Use keyword-rich anchor text: The anchor text is extremely important. Anchor text is what “text” you use while linking to other pages. 

When you use keyword-rich anchor text, you are telling search engines what the linked page is about, which can help your pages rank higher for those keyword terms. Make sure NOT to use exact-match anchor text to trick Google. Use relevant keywords instead.

Link to important pages: Not all pages on your website are created equal, right? Some pages are more important than others and might drive more traffic to your site. You should identify those pages and link to them more often. You can use tools like Google Search Console or Semrush to find your blog’s top 10 traffic-generating posts.  

Don’t confuse Google: Don’t use the exact anchor text for two different pages. If you use the exact anchor text for two different pages, you’re simply confusing search engines like Google. They won’t know which page is the most relevant for a particular keyword.

Audit your internal links: It’s always a best practice to audit your internal links regularly to ensure they are still relevant and working correctly. You can use the Google Search Console to help you with this. Or you can also install free plugins like “Internal Link Juicer” to control your linked pages completely. 

Above all, always make sure to link to related blog posts. When you link to related pages, you are helping not only helping Google crawlers to crawl your inner pages but also users can find more information on the same topic. 

4. You shouldn’t ignore website audits 

One thing most website owners often ignore is fixing their SEO issues.

Do you know why your website is NOT ranking on top of Google, even after creating helpful content? It might be because of technical or SEO-related issues.

That’s why you must perform regular website audits to find and fix your website’s unique issues and improve your Google rankings.

Here’s where tools like Semrush come in handy. We use Semrush to keep an eye on our website’s health.

Here’s what the site audit looks like;

As you can see above, the site audit tool gives you a website health score based on your site’s issues. You can find issues in crawlabilty, HTTPS, core web vitals, etc.

The best part about using Semrush site audit is that it will scan any website for over 140 technical site health and SEO mistakes.

You can also integrate it with Google Analytics to ensure you’re working on your most important pages first.

But.. how much does Semrush cost?

Semrush offers the following three pricing packages.

1. Semrush Pro plan costs $129.95 per month where you can add up to 5 projects, 500 keywords to track and 10,000 results per report
2. Semrush Guru plan costs $249.95 per month where you can add up to 15 projects, 1500 keywords to track and 30,000 results per report
3. Semrush Business plan costs $499.95 per month where you can add up to 40 projects, 5000 keywords to track and 50,000 results per report

5. Build some backlinks

If you want to get the most out of organic SEO, you need backlinks to your website. 

In simple terms, link building is the process of acquiring backlinks from other websites to your website. 

Link building is the KEY to more search traffic. No matter what niche you’re in, you need links.

Why? The reason is backlinks can also increase your website’s credibility. 

When other websites link to your site, Google is more likely to believe that your website is credible and trustworthy. This is the reason why most authority sites often rank #1 on Google, even with average content.

There are many ways to build quality and relevant links to your website, including;

• Creating epic content so other websites can link to you organically. However, you must do some blogger outreach to get the best results.
• Writing guest blog posts for other websites in your industry. You can find a HUGE list of free guest blogging sites here.
• Using a broken link building strategy where you can identify broken links on other websites and suggest relevant links within your website.

If you’re looking for more ways, here are 12 PROVEN ways to build high-quality backlinks in any niche.

6. The freshness factor

Did you know that Google likes freshness in content?

In fact, freshness is a ranking factor for Google. What does it mean? 

It means newer content is more likely to rank higher in search results than older content. 

Keep your website up-to-date if you want to rank higher for your target keywords in Google searches.

Some of the BEST ways to keep your website up-to-date are;

• Publish new content regularly
• Update your existing content (especially top-performing posts regularly). You can come up with new keywords and optimize your old content for those keywords.
• Cover the latest and trending topics in your niche

All the above techniques will help to keep your website’s content FRESH and relevant in the eyes of Google.

How much does organic SEO cost?

One of the common questions most people have is: how much does SEO cost in 2024?

The pricing of organic SEO depends on several factors, such as;

• The keywords you target, along with their competition
• The total number of backlinks you need
• The content requirements your website has, etc

Most website owners and small businesses will invest $1000 to $5000 per month. If you’re using organic SEO consulting services, the pricing can range from $100 to $200 per hour.

If you’re going for the DIY (Do It Yourself) route, the average monthly costs will range from $100 to $500 monthly (depending on the tools you use).

You can check out our free guide on “Is SEO worth it?” for more details on the cost of organic SEO.

A Quick Checklist for a Successful Organic SEO Strategy

Here’s a 10-point quick checklist to help you create a successful SEO strategy for your website or business.

1. Create helpful and engaging content that adds value to your customers or target audience.
2. Keywords are extremely important. Always start with finding relevant keywords and optimize your posts or pages for those keywords naturally.
3. Spy on your competitors and find their top-performing pages and backlink sources. Use competitors to your advantage. Use tools like Semrush for in-depth competitor analysis.
4. Whenever possible, try to build links as they make your website trustworthy.
5. Perform regular site audits. Find all the issues and errors that are preventing your website from getting better search rankings.
6. Search intent is the key. Know the intent behind each search query so you can create content that satisfies the users’ needs.
7. Keep an eye on Google’s search algorithms and see how you can adapt to those changes to survive in the long run.
8. Make sure you have a solid homepage SEO strategy. Identify and optimize your website’s homepage for specific keywords so Google can give more weightage to those keywords while ranking. Optimize your homepage’s title and meta descriptions carefully.
9. Internal links are extremely important as they can help you with better crawling from search engines. Also, they pass link juice to other relevant pages on your site. If done right, they can also improve the overall user dwell time, which is great for improving your organic SEO growth.
10. Page speed is NOT a ranking factor anymore, but it is still a good indicator of how your website performs well in search engines.  If your web pages take more than 3 seconds to load, use these tips to speed up your WordPress site.

• Read: SEO vs OSO: Differences & How to Future-Proof Your Strategy
• Read: Google Core Algorithm Updates: Full Coverage

FAQs | Organic search engine optimization

Here are some frequently asked questions on organic SEO marketing.

Read: Parasite SEO: A Complete Guide for Beginners
Read: Topical Authority SEO: How to Use It to Outrank Your Competitors

Final thoughts on organic SEO marketing

Undoubtedly, organic SEO is the best way to improve your website’s ranking in search engines. Not only does it help you with free traffic, but it sends you highly qualified visitors who can convert into sales.

The key here is to create a solid SEO strategy that helps you long-lasting search traffic to your website.

So what do you think about organic SEO growth? Are you going to implement the organic search strategies mentioned above? Have any questions? Let us know in the comments.