What is a ‘search engine organic listing’?

A ‘search engine organic listing’ refers to the natural or unpaid listing of a website on a search result page.

Organic listings are natural listings of web pages that Google has crawled, and deemed valuable for the search term. The more informative and valuable the page around a key term, the higher it is ranked.

On the image below you can see the search term, entered by the user as “online marketing”.

The first result is an advert which is at the top of the result page. It is marked Ad in a box with a green border, on the left hand side.

After the Ad comes the organic listings. The first one for this search is Quick Sprout – who are worth a visit.

Google adwords paid for listings

Google Ads are listed at the top and bottom of the Google search results page, and are paid for listings. These companies use Google AdWords to get the placement. They bid money on a keyword to get the spot.

When that company stops paying, the advert disappears.

Three Google Ads are shown below, after searching the word CHARITY.

Depending on the competition the bid price on a keyword or phrase can be high.

Google sitelinks

Sometimes, when searching on Google you may also notice the first result within the organic listing not only includes the standard title, description and website address, but also some additional links for pages within a site.

These are referred to as sitelinks.

You cannot request or pay for these additional links for your site. The only way to get them is consistent high quality ethical optimisation across your entire site and blog.

To achieve sitelinks properly optimise your website, make sure the pages are clearly structured, use anchor text and alt tags that are not repetitive to link internally through the site.

If one or more of your pages match the search phrase closely enough, Google will present those pages as sitelinks.

‘Search engine organic listing’ versus ‘paid for’ listing

Few people will buy a service without first knowing a brand. So, simply paying for an advert on a search results page will not get you the results that you need. Online consumers do their research, now more than ever.

Therefore I advise to strive initially to achieve search engine organic listings and brand recognition.

Organic listings last for a long time, if you tend to them like you would a garden. Weeding out things that are not working.

When your brand appears impressively and consistently in front of a buyer, they recognise its worth.

I recommend doing the leg work to maintain a strong organic internet presence.

Paid for ads have their place in aiding this organic online marketing strategy. If your brand already has a strong online presence paid ads are useful when launching a new product or a special offer is being release.

Achieving a strong search engine organic listing

Achieving a good search engine organic listing for your website is a long game, but fully worth it.

When trying to accomplish good search engine results a small business owner must consider:

• The size of the website and how information rich it is.
• How regularly the website is updated.
• If the site is properly optimised for the search engines.
• The advantages of using a blog to support online marketing efforts.
• Use of social media to spread the word.
• Length of time that your site has been on the internet.
• Links to and from external, relevant websites.

Results also depends on how big your competitive market is. Discover and target your audience.

The more influence, the higher the rank

A company will rank highly on Google when it has influence. Google not only looks at the website, but the presence of the company across the whole of the internet.

This includes the Google+ page, YouTube Channel, social media accounts and listings on other sites that also have authority.

The more frequently the website is shared or linked to, the more authority the domain has.

Simply put, Google recognises that your website offers users worthwhile content, and responds by ranking your website more highly.

The more effort your company makes in genuinely helping its customers, the better it will do on Google.