What do consumers do when they are looking for a business, product, or service? Well, most of them go to their laptop, or pull out their smartphone, and pull up their favorite search engine. When the search results appear, they will typically open one or two of the top results on the first page. Very few people read much farther than the first page of search results. So, the goal for your website is to make it onto that first page of search results.

Improving your organic search ranking is often referred to as SEO, or search engine optimization. You will probably have plenty of marketing companies telling you that they have unlocked the secrets to SEO and they know the tricks to get your page to naturally rise to the top of all search engine rankings, allowing you to rake in loads of traffic to your site. Well, there are no magical SEO tricks to be uncovered. There are instead very basic and simple ways to improve your search rankings without paying for ads or any other marketing campaigns.

The Right Keywords
The first step is to determine what keywords you want and need to target. You need to find out what keywords your customers are searching. Your customers are most likely going to be searching for very vague and generic terms, and not searching for specific industry jargon. If you have littered your site with complex industry terms that only people in the business are going to understand or use, your site is not going to be easily accessed or comprehended by your average customer.

Original Content
Search engines, such as Google, are constantly improving their algorithms in order to ensure that readers are receiving the best and most relevant information possible. This means that they are taking steps to rule our spam and plagiarized materials. One way to climb the search rankings is by using your targeted keywords within material that is original, creative, and fresh. You should be frequently uploading material that cannot be found anywhere else on the Internet. Not only will this help you in the search engine rankings, but your readers will be more likely to recommend your site because of its substance and value.

Links
A great way to improve your organic search ranking is to include text links within your content. This means back linking your targeted keywords to relevant websites. The improved search algorithms are looking for websites that not only include many links, but those that have good quality links.

Social Media
Simply by getting involved and creating a presence within social media platforms has been found to help improve search engine rankings for websites. By developing a strong following on these sites, you can increase traffic to your site and increase your visibility in search engine results.

Proper Coding
Check the coding of every single page on your site for errors. Clean, concise, and correct coding can greatly influence the way your site is indexed, and therefore how prevalent your site will be in the search engine space. If you are unsure about whether or not your pages are coded correctly, it can be advantageous to seek a one-time consultation with a professional programmer.

Stay Active and Creative
The way to stay ahead of your competition naturally in the search engines is to keep adding content. Even by adding a blog post once ever day or two, which contains information relevant to your industry, can make a huge difference. The pertinent, up to date, and original information you add to your site, the stronger your web presence will become. If you do not have time to create and publish new content, you may need to enlist outside help, but there is no reason that you are not able to rise to the top of the search rankings on your own.

Valerie Mellema is the owner of Words You Want and has over 7 years experience in the SEO writing industry. Read about what Words You Want has to offer and learn some great content marketing tips at http://blog.wordsyouwant.com.