SE102 – Organic, Local and PPC

Understanding Your Organic Search Engine Placement

Organic search engine placement is free and is one of the three main types of traffic available to Web surfers to locate information. In addition to organic, or natural listings, there are Local listings and PPC (Pay Per Click) listings. Below, you will learn about all three and how to spot the different listing types in the major search engines.

DEFINITIONS

Organic Placement – Organic placement, also known as natural and sometimes free placement, is the ability for the search engines to read your Web site (also known as spidering, crawling, or indexing) and based on your Web site metas, content, and search engine popularity, place your listings in their displays at NO COST. This is not to be confused with PPC (Pay Per Click) placement where a vendor “pays per click” to be seen. PPC doesn’t consider how well written the site is for indexing (i.e.: Is it search engine friendly?); only that the vendor is willing to pay to be seen.

Local Placement – To identify a Local Business Listing, type in the Search box: City + State + topic you are searching.  Depending on the search engine you are using, Local Listings appear slightly differently.

  • Google: On the search results page, you should see listings with “Lettered Balloons” that when hovered either turn RED (free) or BLUE (paid).  Listings with a Balloon indicators are Local Listings. Remember that these listings may differ slightly from Google Maps Listing (maps.google.com) but both allow you to access a Detail Page for any Local business by either clicking MORE or REVIEWS.
  • Yahoo: On the search results page, you should see a map and “Numbered” Listings to the right of the map.  The numbered listings are the Local Listings. To see the Local Listing data click on the “Info” text link.
  • Bing: On the search results page, you should see a map and “Numbered” Listings to the right of the map. The numbered listings are the Local Listings.  To see the Local Listing data click on the Business Name Link.

PPC (Pay Per Click) – Pay Per Click Programs are available through companies such as Google Adwords, Microsoft adCenter and Facebook.  Pay Per Click Programs DO NOT CONSIDER whether or not your Web site has been developed to be search engine friendly. They simply want you to choose phrases that you want your site to appear on, then you pay every time someone clicks on that listing. You will recognize a PPC listing in any of the search engines because it will be in a section denoted SPONSORED LINKS, RESULTS, or ADS. So when you see the group heading SPONSORED LINKS, RESULTS, or ADS, you know that if you click on a listing in that section, the vendor will have their account charged at the point you click. Every PPC system does their placement and cost structures a little differently, but what they all have in common is that when an AD gets clicked on, the vendor pays – Every Time.

SITE SATURATION

Finally, you will note that many sites have a Web address and then a / with a file name, and possible sub-directory, appended on the end of the Web address. This is because the various search engine(s) have indexed a sub page of the site – not just the home page. By indexing multiple sub pages, with different meta tags and content, the amount of traffic to those pages increases, thus increasing the overall visitors to the Web site. Any Web site with more than one page can do this to expand visibility on the Web. To learn more about indexing multiple pages of your site in order to drive more traffic, click on Free Education Course [SE103].