Organic SEO

By Gennady Lager, SendTraffic SEO Specialist

Organic SEO is commonly thought of as simply the “naturally” or “organically” occurring search results that are found on the left side of a search engine results page below and to the left of the paid listings.  Usually, these results are represented as unpaid and the product of algorithmic indexing of websites.  That is also the natural perception of the services offered by most organic SEO agencies.  However, there are some successful organic SEO agencies which take this definition a step further than just this ranking service, rather these companies take into account not just ranking a website but the methods they use for ranking.  This is what defines a professional “Whitehat” organic SEO consulting company versus one that uses “Blackhat” techniques to improve natural rankings.

The “Whitehat” Organic SEO Agency

The prime difference between a Whitehat and Blackhat organic SEO agency is the methodology used to achieve results as well as the long term results themselves.  The agency that practices Whitehat techniques normally advises on and performs SEO services with a content-based approach.  This approach will generally aim to improve website content pages while focusing on specific keywords to optimize and rank.  This is the strictest definition of organic SEO in that it adheres to the terms of service and webmaster guidelines of the major search engines as well as following the generally accepted procedures for long term keyword ranking success.  This approach, while usually involving more work, creativity, and patience does prove to survive search engine algorithm updates better while reducing the risk of triggering search engine filtering, penalties and bans.

The “Blackhat” Organic SEO Agency

A Blackhat organic SEO agency is one that looks for a quick fix approach to improving ranking.  This method of so-called “organic SEO” is commonly accomplished by means of technology and automation.  For example, the Blackhat organic SEO agency may automate the search engine and directory submission processes.  While they practices are frowned upon by both search engines and the Whitehat organic SEO communities, they do not actually violate any laws—only the search engines terms of service and webmaster guidelines.  These practices are also difficult to detect, therefore they may be successful at first to a degree.  The problems come when the search engines become wise to practices such as these and alter their algorithms to weed-out sites using such practices.  In fact, some search engines are known to filter, penalize and sometimes ban all the sites on a similar IP as the offending site.  Another common Blackhat practice of an organic SEO consulting company is IP delivery or “cloaking.”  This technology based “optimization” technique delivers different content to search engines than it would to users.  The search engines get very simple, keyword-rich and highly optimized pages which would be very unfriendly to users, while users get a page that is very user-friendly but would not generally be considered search engine friendly.

More Ways a True Organic SEO Firm Will Stand Out

One of the most important ranking factors, which any organic SEO firm will tell you, is link acquisition.  This method of citation distributes relevant importance from one webpage to another.  In this way, search engines can more readily define a good site from a bad one.  The Blackhat organic SEO firm will try and manipulate the link citation acquisition process by applying technological methods to automate the process and cheat the system as best as possible.  Remember: those citations are deemed important in aiding ranking because they represent the importance of a webpage; they should not benefit a website that has had its link acquisition automated or gamed in an artificial manner.  When this happens, the so-called organic SEO firm will use expedient linking schemes such as buying text links, link farms, and free-for-all directories.  The true organic SEO firm will help build quality in your site by adding good content that will encourage the natural linking process.  It will also continually look for links from industry related websites that not only promise to bring qualified traffic to your page, but also aid in representing the website as a trusted authority page in the industry.  When search engine algorithms see that your closely related peers are citing your page as important, the rankings will support the efforts.  The Blackhat organic SEO firm will, on the other hand, look to getting as many links as possible—from anywhere.  Algorithms are always improving and distinguishing between good and bad links is getting easier for search engines to accomplish causing the devaluation of low quality irrelevant links and possibly even the filtering of pages that are known to be recipients of mass quantities of these extraneous citations.

Why an Algorithm Update Scares a “Blackhat” SEO Company

A Blackhat organic SEO company will use gaps in search engine ranking algorithms to design technological solutions to improve rankings.  While these tricks are not illegal, they raise the chances that the search results delivered by search engines will be of lower quality because that organic SEO company will fool the search engine into showing results that are not earned.  Search engines stay in business by providing highly relevant results and gathering market share in the process—if you like the results from a search offering one day, you will come back another day to use the same service.  The search engine capitalizes on this by selling ad space in the form of pay per-click advertising (among other methods).  If the search engine is fooled by a Blackhat organic SEO company, it will display less than relevant results, the user may notice this and possibly look elsewhere for their search provider.  To combat artificially induced results, the search engines are constantly updating their algorithms to prevent these sorts of schemes from synthetically improving search results.  When this happens, the artificially improved results will decline in the rankings and the Blackhat organic SEO company will likely start getting angry calls and E-Mails from their clients demanding better results.  This usually sends these types of companies scrambling to find the next ‘quick fix’ technology solution to game the search engines another way—and the cycle continues.  This is the main reason why the results from artificially produce rankings by Blackhat organic SEO companies are generally short-term solutions and do not offer any significant website improvements.

Why Algorithm Updates are great for those Companies Offering True Organic SEO Services

The same phenomenon that causes artificial rankings to drop, leaves empty search engine results page slots for quality pages produced by true organic SEO services to move up and fill those voids.  Throughout the history of search, there has been a common denominator for those sites with constantly good rankings for major industry keywords: they have offered pages that are of great quality and serve a real purpose to their users produced by those same Whitehat organic SEO services.  In essence, true organic SEO service practitioners do not worry about ‘algorithmic shifts’ and do not need to make major re-optimization changes thereby saving future time and money in the process.  Over time, as sites mature, the well optimized Whitehat organic SEO websites will steadily gain position due to naturally occurring factors incorporated into almost every search engines algorithm including domain age, link profile, and industry authority.

The Other Side of Site Traffic from the “Blackhat” Organic SEO Consulting Company

If you are interesting in an organic SEO consulting company, you should look at the big picture of search engine marketing—not simply getting a site ranked.  One must analyze the quality, demographics and mindset of the traffic achieved by typically artificial organic SEO consulting.  If you deliver a high ranking to a website that provides a poor or irrelevant user experience, what is the actual likelihood the user will spend some time on the site and act toward a conversion?  The answer is that it is quite unlikely.  The user will feel fooled and will quickly resolve to use the “back” button on their browser.  In the end, organic SEO consulting that uses automated and underhanded technology-based techniques to trick the search engines into displaying irrelevant results hurts the users, the search engines, and ultimately that same Blackhat organic SEO consulting company because it has poor performance, customer retention and loyalty.

What to Expect from a True Organic SEO Service

In such a new and dynamic industry as SEO, every firm has different methodologies, beliefs, principals and ethics that is adheres to.  That being said, we have made a sharp distinction between the short-term, high risk (possible) results of a Blackhat or artificial organic SEO service verses those of Whitehat or true organic SEO services.  While the Whitehat service will preach and practice good SEO copywriting, keyword prominence and natural quality backlink acquisition, the Blackhat service will look for an easy way to fool the search engines through technology.  A true organic search engine optimization service company should be looked at as a long term investment while a Blackhat organic SEO service company is a quick fix solution that will undoubtedly lead to disappointing results and high costs in the end.  If you are faced with a choice between the two and are not sure which is right for you, the test is that a good organic SEO firm will not accept a contract that refuses to add good content to the site and improve the overall user experience.