Webmentor's How To Guides

Webmentor's How To Guides are written in plain english so that ordinary business folk can understand important stuff about their websites.

Your consent to the use of Cookies

Your consent to the use of cookies on this site is determined by your current browser settings. Learn about the cookies we use here.

Webmentor's Webhosting Tables

Compare Irish Web Hosts in an easy to read table. Vote and leave a comment, or read what others have to say. Take me to the Webhosting Tables.

Will SEO increase my ranking? How is a Paid Listing different?

SEO = Search Engine Optimisation

The purpose of SEO is to make your website rank highly with Search Engines for your chosen keywords. If you're not sure what this means, read on and you'll see it's simpler than it sounds!

What do Keywords have to do with SEO?

It all begins with users typing keywords into Search Engines like Google or Bing to find web pages that are relevant to their search (see Diag 1. below).

keywords used in search engine
Diag 1. Typing Keyword(s) into a Search Engine

Although search engines each have their own secret algorithms, what they're attempting to do is match the best possible web pages with the keywords entered by the user. In the scenario shown in Diag 1, the user expects to get back web pages that are relevant for "restaurants dublin", and the results that the Search Engines bring back are known as the SERPs, or Search Engine Result Pages.

For your web page to be ranked highly for the keywords restaurants dublin, then at a minimum, your web page will need to contain those keywords in order to get a ranking for it.

The first page of the SERPs lists the top ten most relevant web pages, ranked 1-10, for the keywords searched. (Have a look at Diag 2 below to see what a SERPs page looks like in Google).

Here's why SERPs and SEO matter

Less than 1 in 10 people will go on to a second page of SERPs.

This is also why the first step in SEO involves fastidious keyword research – we need to know what keywords people are using to find businesses like yours. Once we know what those keywords are, the end game is to have a page from your website ranking 1-10 for those keywords, so that you can effectively be found by people using Search Engines. (Ranked 11? Too bad. Its on the next page of the SERPs. Only 1 in 10 going that far, see?)

But there is a way to beat the system! With a Paid Listing you can go straight to the first page without any natural keyword rankings.

Understanding the difference between Organic Rankings and Paid Listings

When you use Google to search for webpages, the SERPs that Google brings back can be divided into 2 types of result – organic and paid. Have a look at the diagram below:

SERPs, organic and paid listings
Diag 2. The SERPS. Showing organic and paid listings

An Organic Listing is free!

How does it happen? It happens because if a Search Engine considers that a page on your website is particularly relevant for the keywords that the visitor used, (plus a couple of other factors like the age of your website, authority, trust, links in, links out and so on), then the Search Engine will give your most relevant webpage a ranking for that keyword(s). If you're ranked 1-10 for those keyword(s), then you'll appear on the first page of the SERPs. You cannot pay Google to adjust your keyword rank. You can, however, pay an SEO expert to try to increase it for your chosen keywords.

The organic ranking that any webpage gets is specific to a keyword (or keywords). Think of it as 'Keyword Rank'.

Because that's all it really is. You may have a page that ranks No.4 for the keywords restaurants dublin, but only ranks 132 for the keywords fine dining ireland, and doesn't rank at all for the single keyword restaurant, or the single keyword Dublin or the completely unrelated single keyword horses. (And don’t worry, most people type in 2 or more keywords at a time). The ranking of pages according to keywords is solely at the discretion of the Search Engine concerned, therefore we can define SEO as "The art of achieving higher organic rankings with Search Engines for chosen keywords in your business/service category".

Use Google's keyword tool to discover highly searched keywords in your business sector

Shortcut: Use a Paid Listing to get on to the first page of the SERPs

As well as organically ranked pages, all the big search engines also have paid listings on their SERPs. It's how they make their money. Google's version is called Adwords. It's also based on keywords except you don't have to have an organic rank to get a paid listing. All you need is money. You bid a set amount for each keyword/keyword combination you'd like your listing to appear for and the highest bidders will be displayed on the front page of the SERPs, in the Sponsored Listings section, when a user searches for those keywords(s). Unlike organic listings, you get to decide which webpage the user will land on if they click your ad. Which is great, because you can put up a special landing page to convert those leads and/or generate sales.

Should I use a paid listing rather than an organic ranking?

Getting a decent (page 1 of SERPs) organic ranking is a longterm effort and getting results can be slow. However, if you're willing to get your pages optimised by a good SEO person and you arrive in positions 1-4 of the organic results for a keyword(s), you will be well-placed to receive an entire 50% of the potential clicks for that page for free. Organic rankings don't last forever, but they are definitely long-term (months to years) compared to a paid listing which disappears immediately you stop paying.

Does a paid listing influence my organic ranking?

No it absolutely does not. Weirdly enough though, the reverse can be true. If you have a paid listing and certain keyword(s) you bid on match well with your landing page then that keyword's "quality score" goes up. That means your paid listing might cost a little less or be shown higher up than an equal bid with a lower quality score for that keyword(s).

Is a user more likely to click on a paid listing or an organic one?

The traditional figure quoted is 75% of users will click on organic and 25% on a paid listing. However, those figures are regularly disputed. Ask yourself this though - roughly how often you would click on a paid listing compared to an organic result? IMO the traditional 75-25 split is probably about right on average (for most of the moon's phases).

What's the best way to go about getting organic rankings?

The most important things to do are:

  1. Optimise code and text on the webpages themselves to show up keywords that are relevant to your business/service and popularly used by the public AND
  2. Get quality links from other websites (search engines read that as a sign that your pages are both popular and authoritative and possibly also relevant for a particular keyword combination. Giving other relevant websites quality links out can work too, by the way.)
What advice would you give to a business for SEO?

Find out what keywords are most used to search for your goods/services. There's no point in calling your night class a nocturnal programme for oenophiles when it's really a wine tasting evening class. Do your keyword research.