For any startup, knowing where to begin with marketing yourself and your product can be a challenge. On the seemingly ever-growing list of possible marketing channels - from email to social to organic to paid - prioritizing which channels to focus your limited resources on is a strategy in and of itself.
Thankfully, though, getting a basic search engine optimization (SEO) strategy off the ground in order to drive organic traffic to your website isn't as hard as it seems, and there are tons of resources and tools available to help your startup implement SEO in-house.
When done right, SEO is an extremly cost effective strategy, and with the right plan and some effort, you can dominate your online competitors in search results. While SEO is definintely a long term strategy that requires ongoing effort, the return on investment is great - I've worked with countless clients who see higher conversion rates and more qualified traffic from organic traffic over paid and social channels.
Here's an overview of where to get started with SEO for your startup, and a roundup of helpful tools.
1. Start early
In my experience, it's very common for companies and startups to forgo an SEO strategy for other marketing methods with the intention of adding SEO down the road. However, SEO is much easier to implement during the development phase of your website, or shortly after launch, rather than retroactively.
2. Educate yourself + your team
If anything is true about the world of SEO, it's that things are always changing. There's a lot of misinformation out there, and there are definitely old blackhat ways of doing SEO that could hurt a startup attempting to implement SEO for themselves. However, knowing who you can trust and where to go for the best information is vital. You don't need to become an expert, but the more members on your team with cursory knowledge of SEO, the better.
Here are some of the best blogs and resources in the industry for getting started and for staying on top of SEO trends.
3. Use keyword research to uncover target terms
Undeniably, understanding your audience and what they're searching for to find your startup and product is a first step to a strong SEO strategy. Doing keyword research will help you discover what phrases your potential customers are using to search your niche (which can often times differ from what you might think!), how much volume the phrases get on a monthly basis, and how competitve they are. Developing a strategy based on finding the key terms with relatively high search volume and medium to low competition is the sweet spot to strive for. Additionally, be strategic by prioritizing your list - start with your 10-15 top terms, and build out your keyword strategy over time with secondary and tertiary targets.
Here are some great tools for keyword research:
4. Audit your current site
After you've developed your target keyword list, the easiest way to know what to tackle next is to audit your website. An audit will help you identify how to incorporate a given keyword into your key landing pages, such as in meta descriptions, title tags, copy, and content. Plus, you can check for other things that impact your website's ability to rank high in search engines, like proper url structure and site speed.
Free tools for running SEO audits:
OptimizeMySite (great for managing your own SEO campaign)
MySiteAuditor (great for startup web design, seo, online PR, and digital marketing agencies)
How to Do Your Own 5 Minute SEO Audit
5. Master on-page optimization for your top landing pages
Onpage optimization is perhaps one of the most important aspects of SEO, and where most of your initial SEO work will take place. With a bit of reading and the help of your web developer or a user-friendly CMS, your startup can optimize the most important pages of your site and begin ranking in search results. Google and other search engines' goal is to find the most relevant page of your site for any given key phrase, so target 1-2 keywords for each landing page by adding your keyword to meta data and onpage content.
More reading on onpage SEO:
A Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting and OnPage SEO
Onpage SEO: The Anatomy of a Perfectly Optimized Page
6. Develop -and stick to - a content marketing strategy
Once your landing pages are fully optimized, you'll need a strategy for developing fresh, new, relevant content to earn links back to your site. In the old days of SEO, many companies would build links by buying them or spamming directory sites - but those tactics today will instantly get your startup penalized by search engines.
Start a company blog, publish regularly, and promote your content via other marketing channels - and watch your organic traffic grow. The key to content marketing is consistency, as well as creating truly valuable and diverse content - anything from blog posts to ebooks to videos to infographics - that your audience will want to engage with and share.
Great content marketing resources:
Content Marketing Tools: The Ultimate List
7. Make your website mobile-friendly
Earlier this year, Google's most recent algorithm update focused exclusively on mobile-friendliness, meaning that websites that aren't optimized for mobile are likely to see lower rankings than websites that are. More and more users are using mobile devices to peruse the web and make purchases, and if your startup doesn't recognize this, you're missing out.
Resources on Google's mobile-friendly update and how to improve your website for mobile:
Google's Mobile-Friendly Update: Everything You Need to Know
8. Cultivate a following on social media
Social signals is are not only one of many SEO factors that impact your search rankings, but are also an important tool for promoting your content and increasing brand awareness. Two important things to remember with social media marketing is 1) be where your audience is, and 2) you get out of it what you put into it. In other words, your audience may not be active on every single social media platform, so choose which networks make the most sense for your startup. Post regularly, and engage in real conversations - social media users are savvy, and authenticity is important.
SEO Guide: Social Media & Ranking in Search Results
6 Social Media Practices That Boost SEO
9. Measure SEO success
SEO is an ongoing strategy, and the best way to ensure success is to measure your progress along the way. Make sure you're tracking and analyzing how your organic traffic is performing, what keywords you're appearing in search results for, and how engaged your organic users are and if they're converting. Set up specific goals in Google Analytics and review on a monthly and quarterly basis, and utilize SEO software to monitor rankings.
10. Adapt
Nothing could be more true for a startup than the need to adapt. As I mentioned before, SEO is a constantly changing industry, and what works today might not be as effective next year. Hopefully this post helps your startup understand where to begin (and gives you the resources you need), but know that you can't stop there. Work SEO into your growth plan for the long term and adapt to new trends by staying up to date and contantly optimizing your website - it's a surefire way to help your startup get its name out there and relize its potential.
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