What is an organic search? Surely you’ve heard this term before, but might still be unsure as to what it means.  According to Techopedia.com, “An organic search is a term for search engine results that are naturally generated and not influenced by commercial relationships between an organization and a search provider.”  This means that organic search results are purely the results of a search engine, contrary to pay-per-click advertisements that companies pay for to ensure that their organization gets some face time at the top of a search.  For example, the screen shot below shows where both the organic search results and pay per click advertisements are located.

The top two search results in this image are pay-per-click advertisements; clicking on any of these options would not qualify as an ‘organic search.’  On the contrary, anything below the shaded top two results that comes from the search engine (in this case Google) can be counted as an organic search result.  The reason that marketers and advertisers care so much about organic search results is simple; the higher their results, the more traffic their website will receive. For this reason, understanding the concept of an organic search result is necessary for both clients and marketers alike.