Organic

Up to 90% of internet users use search engines to find information or research a product or service before buying it. About 75% of searchers never look beyond the first few pages of search results. About 65% of business websites were written only with the customer in mind, not search engines.

The figures vary from survey to survey, from year to year, but the truth is clear: websites have to aim for high search engine rankings to be read, and lots just don't. The good news is that the optimisation required will look after the needs of both site visitors and search engines pretty well.

Organic optimisation deals with changes made to the web content that builds its ranking in a search. Often creative in nature, this content might include new blogs and social media material, as well as webpage copy.

Many different techniques can play a part in this steady revision of a website. Enormous lists of tips are easily found, some incomprehensible to a non-specialist. These are the main, easily understood principles:

• Ensure that searchers see on the search page that your site page will be useful to them, with clean, descriptive page titles, URLs rich in chosen keywords, and accurate meta tags.

• Use good quality, unique, well laid-out page content that gives people the information they're looking for, emphasising select keyword phrases. Keep it short, accurate and interesting. Update it, often.

• Make sure that other sites link to yours, but only where links are a natural part of a piece of useful content, such as blogs, white papers and press releases.

• Avoid dirty tricks, like using large blocks of unread and unreadable text jammed full of keywords, or buying in unnatural links; visitors (humans, robots and spiders) are all unimpressed and the website loses position.