Organic Search Tastes Better -- And It's Better for You

by JulieLaboe

Where are your customers immediately before they're your customers? That's where you want to be. What are they thinking about? That's what you want to be about. What do they need? You want to be that solution. Think about the very first thing you do when you need something. After possibly asking your colleagues and friends for leads and ideas, you probably go straight to a search engine and type in some keywords that, to you, seem relevant to your need. Are you any different than your potential customer? Chances are your customers were on a search engine just before they decided to buy from you. And chances are that, at the time, they were thinking about their need for a solution just like yours; in fact, chances are they needed one pretty badly.

What do you pay attention to, by the way, once you've entered the keywords and then pressed "enter"? More than likely you look at the top ten entries on the very first page of results and determine which one speaks most directly to what it is you're seeking. These are the organic, or natural, search results. Organic results comprise all entries on the search page that someone or some company did not actually pay the search engine to display. As early as 2005, JupiterResearch found that 87 percent of commercial traffic online originates with organic search. Surely this number remains the same or has increased; search engines have only grown in prominence since. Plus, paid search traffic (stuff like pay-per-click, PPC -- basically, all those other links on the search results page) has seen a precipitous decline over the past year (a 26 percent contraction, to be exact). It all adds up to the dominance of organic search. The plausible conclusion is that the importance of organic search is at the zenith of its flight and showing no signs of descending. Indeed, the vast majority of your potential customers rely on natural search engine results as they begin their buying process. These results are just more trustworthy in the consumer's eye. Why? Because search engines themselves are perceived to be trustworthy, third-party vetters of information.

Your brand needs to be in these organic results, and the good news is that proper search engine marketing (SEM), and close cousin to search engine optimization (SEO) will improve your presence in the organic results. And an excellent way to get there is to participate in the LTB Spotlight, an article about your brand that includes LTB's logo and seal of approval -- yet more third-party endorsement of your technology. The LTB Spotlight helps you to get ranked highly in organic search results associated with keyword phrases pertinent to your solution. Not only will you be vetted organically by the search engines, but you'll also have the additional benefit of a third party -- LTB itself -- further vetting your worthiness. Most importantly, you'll be where your potential customers are before they buy.

Excerpts taken, with permission, from the TMT Editor's Corner blog by Brent Skinner, Editor-In-Chief of TalentManagementTech.com.