There is a fair amount of discussion on organic Search Engine Optimization at forums, blogs, and web sites about SEO – but how do you know if your SEO strategy is actually organic, or what could be changed to make it more organic?

It isn’t quite as simple as just not using PPC ads. There are a number of characteristics which determine whether or not an SEO campaign is organic. To know if your SEO is organic, see if can you agree with the statements in the following checklist:

- You don’t use paid/guaranteed inclusion services or pay for expedited submission on any of the search engines.

- Your web site’s inbound links (preferably not bought) appear on web pages which have relevant or similar content.

- You don’t use software or online scripts which “mass-submit” your site to huge numbers of search engines or directories.

- None of your site’s search engine listings were bought through pay per click (PPC) sponsored search result programs.

- You don’t apply techniques like “cloaking” or “doorway pages”, which are aimed at deceiving search engine spiders/robots.

- The site doesn’t have lots of useless, automatically generated, or basically identical pages designed to attract hits.

- You haven’t reciprocally linked to web sites which have little or no relevance to the site you are promoting.

- Your SEO strategy includes an emphasis upon optimizing the web site itself (META tags, keyword density, navigation, etc).

- You know that none of your affiliates or other promoters are using any of the above-mentioned techniques to advertise your site.

If you were able to check all of these items, your SEO methods are probably considered organic. However, there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with using non-organic SEO, as long as you know that your techniques are effective, up to date, and ethical.

Organic SEO usually provides a more long-term effect than other strategies, and generates traffic from a wider range of search engines without separate efforts. It’s also well-accepted by search engines, isn’t affected by “click fraud”, and generally has a lower ongoing cost.

However, organic SEO techniques typically take longer to start producing hits than PPC or paid inclusion listings. They are also more time-consuming and don’t allow the effectiveness of different keywords, phrases, or page descriptions to be tested as easily.

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