Organic SEO – Let’s Get Real

First – Your business needs to be verified by Google. This is done online and you can designate a ” manager” to add the information on your business or you, as the business owner, can do this yourself. This isn’t a manager in the traditional sense but a “manager” that manages the data that google will use to index and verify your website and the existence of your business.  Since Google dominates with 83% of the mobile search market and 63% of desktop search, this should be a really good start. (source  https://goo.gl/Kgqmma)

Second – Your business needs links about its website on other websites. The more popular and relevant the site that links to yours, the better. Google’s algorithm searches websites to see which websites they link to. One questionable and slightly inorganic strategy is to use a service like PR Web ( you have to pay them) and create a press release. You create the release and they send it off to all kinds of media and websites. Say, for example, you wanted to create a press release about your Grand Opening and the recent business creation. This will create a lot of links back to your website. But Google could identify this method as a scheme to “game the system” (much like a link farm might) and that might eventually thwart the growth of your online presence. This probably isn’t worth the risk.

However, to be safe for the future you can always let your web presence grow “organically” – and it will, with a little work.  If you, your friends, or people in your family have facebook pages, twitter accounts or other social media accounts, ask them to post a link about your grand opening, or the website homepage. This will help increase web presence. Also, if you have other businesses that you buy or sell from, ask them to add a link to your site from theirs and of course in return you will do the same for them.

Google also looks to see how recently and frequently a website has been updated. So it is always a good idea to have a new post about a sale or new product on your “posts” page.

When I search on Virts Family Farms on Google’s browser chrome recently, (I did this yesterday on May 17th, 2018) I got 8 links to different pages on CEA Farms website or about CEA  Farms mentions in local newspapers and THEN a link to the Virts Family Farms Farm Market’s website. This isn’t too bad since the farm markets existence on the web is relatively new and both CEA Farms and Virts Family Farms have the same physical location, down to the specific address at 15485 Purcellville Rd, Purcellville, VA 20132.

In addition to location adding a wrinkle to online presence, one persons Google search results may be different from another depending on their individual search history. So if you try the same search as another person you may get different results. This is because google normally indexes search and browsing history and takes one’s search history into consideration when searching for search terms a person enters.

So your friend might not see the link to the farmers market you searched for (virtsfamilyfarms.com for example) listed as high up in the search rankings as you did yet since he/she has a certain search history and virtsfamilyfarms.com is relatively new on the web.  However, as relevant content is added on the site, links back to the site from other affiliated sites are added and an owner initiated verification of Virts Family Farms Farmers Market by Google is completed, the rankings will definitely change for the better for anyone that searches.

Please feel free to call, post a response or text with any questions/comments about this post or any other issue with your site or this article. I may be able to offer a solution.