Quite simply, natural search engine optimisation is the process of getting your website shown in the regular search engine results rather than the sponsored links sections. Years ago this used to be just a matter of publishing your web page but with the masses of competition we face nowadays, it’s not quite that simple.

How to go about natural search engine optimisation

For the most part, natural search engine optimisation is a matter of following a few simple rules. Following these rules will increase the chance of Google understanding what the pages on your site are about and, in turn, featuring those pages nicely in the search results.

If you’d like some free tips to help you with your natural search engine optimisation then just put your email addres in the box towards the top right of this page and I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, make sure that your website pages are optimised for search engines as well as real users.

Search engines are essentially just computer programs that process an unimaginably large amount of data in crazily short periods of time.

So they have to make a snap decision about your website pages before showing them in the results.

You can see just how much guesswork is involved by searching for something fairly obscure and then trying to go to the last page in the results. Often the original figure shown for the number of results will be cut down as the search algorithm re-thinks it’s answer. Almost as though it phoned a friend to check whether its original idea was correct.

Natural search engine optimisation means you need to give the search engine as many clues as possible about the subject matter of each page.

Home in on a keyword phrase (several words relating to the topic of the page) and make sure that phrase appears in the title (the clickable part shown in the search engine listings), a headline, ideally as the alt text for an image on your page and sprinkled throughout the actual words on your page.

The main words on your page should be designed for human readers first and foremost, search engines second. Partly because computers can’t read in the same way as humans can, partly because search engines take into account a number of factors about a page and that includes whether or not your site visitors are interested enough in what you’re saying to hang around and read it.

The helpful Google Toolbar you installed gives them information about this. So does Google Analytics. They also try to measure how long it takes a site visitor to click back to the search results (this isn’t necessarily precise for a number of reasons). Plus they take notice of whether a site visitor likes or dislikes your page via some of the extra options that often appear on the search results.

On top of that, natural search engine optimisation also involves getting links pointing back to your site pages – a bit like a more sophisticated version of being friends with people on Facebook as the search engines take into account how popular your website’s friends are.

Natural search engine optimisation is a lot to concentrate on but is well worth doing to keep your pages high in the search results.