Organic Keywords: What Is an Organic Keyword?

An organic keyword is a keyword used to attract free traffic through search engine optimization (SEO). Organic keywords contrast with pay-per-click (PPC) keywords, which are bid on through paid search marketing campaigns.

In this article, you’ll get an introduction to how organic keywords should fit into your marketing strategy.

Organic Keywords and SEO

Organic search is a hugely valuable marketing channel. Every day, there are over 3.5 BILLION searches on Google alone! So how can you capture some of that traffic and bring it to your own site?

In order to drive traffic through organic search, you need to optimize your web content for organic keywords. Those are the terms that people are typing into Google in order to find information and solutions to their problems.

Although Google’s ranking algorithms include many, many factors, and the algorithms are always evolving, one of the leading factors is on-page keyword optimization. If the keyword that people are searching for doesn’t appear anywhere in your web copy, you are highly unlikely to rank for that keyword.

This is why it’s so important to do keyword research: You need to find the keywords that real people really use when looking for content, products, or services like yours, so you can optimize your site pages for those organic keywords.

How to Do Organic Keyword Research

It’s not enough to guess what keywords you need to include in your site’s content. You need to use organic keyword tools to find real keywords and keyword data that will inform your organic traffic strategy.

WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool is an easy way to get started with your organic keyword research. You can start by entering a topic or the URL of a website to see which keywords are relevant to that topic or site and their organic search volume (how many people are searching for those topics each month):

You can then get all those related keywords emailed directly to your inbox so you can start using them in your content marketing and organic search campaigns.

How to Optimize Your Site for Organic Keywords

On-page optimization is important if you want to drive traffic through organic search. Site organization is also important; you can’t just dump all your keywords onto one page and hope for the best.

Instead, it’s crucial to create valuable resources that are highly relevant to each set of semantically related keywords. For example, if you run a boutique closet company, you might want to create a single resource that targets a set of keywords related to closet organization. Those different keyword variations might include “how to organize a closet,” “closet organization tips,” etc. If you also sell shoe organizers, you would want to create a separate landing page optimized for “shoe organizer” keywords.

Don’t cut corners when it comes to quality. Search engines and users both favor content that is truly unique and exceptionally helpful.

There are a few key areas where your keywords need to appear to help you rank organically for relevant searches. These include:

• The URL
• The title and H1 tags
• The first sentence or at least the first paragraph
• Subheads
• Image file names and alt text
• The meta description
• In links to related content

Learn more about optimizing your content with keywords and the basics of SEO.