Startup SEO: Paving the way to success

Startups that get more relevant traffic to their websites beat their competition.

But it’s fair to say though that a considered SEO Strategy hasn’t always been on the agenda for some companies dominating search. If they’ve not intentionally created and undertaken an SEO strategy but still see great results, it’s usually because their product or service is innovative or genuinely unique. Usually it’s because it’s being talked about, a lot.

That’s because it’s a major factor of what Google looks at. Is something original? Is it popular? Is it ethical? Is it useful to Google’s users? It wants to promote original content that is most relevant for their users and it will take into consideration who trusts this content, enough to link to it.

In an ideal world, your product or service is going to generate a huge buzz on it’s own and Google will recognize that. But let’s face it, that’s pretty rare. So what can you do to give your new startup the best chance of domination in search, or at least give it a competitive future?

We’re going to look at website SEO because even if your startup is an App, the likelihood is that you’re going to have a website to promote it. First of all, lets think about what SEO can do for you:

Lead generation

Obviously, the focus for most businesses. SEO is just one part of your marketing strategy, but it can be a hugely rewarding part. The joy of SEO is that it’s inbound at it’s best. Instead of trying to find prospects and hoping that, at this exact time they just happen to be looking for you or your product and are willing to start a discussion with you. Inbound flips this paradigm on it’s head. Your prospects are actively looking for you, at the time they need something and with the intention of finding a supplier. Not only that, if people are finding you first, they’re not finding your competition.

Brand exposure

Consider the rule of 7. An old marketing adage which states that a prospect needs to see or hear your marketing message at least seven times before they trust your brand. This is a guide rather than a prescription as it doesn’t always need to be 7 times, but the truth of the ‘Rule of Seven’ is you can’t ignore the power of repeating your marketing message. Marketing must be an on-going process in order for it to be successful. SEO can facilitate this process, by exposing your content and your brand.

Long-term authority in search

Google Rankbrain (one of Google’s latest algorithm updates) is intelligently assessing search results at a pace never seen before. It’s better at understanding where content has come from, if it’s original and how it’s relevant. This has led many analysts to believe that being the originator of a particular popular term or piece of content could actually be a signal that you are an influencer on a subject or topic. If Google recognises this, it’s going to have a positive impact on your exposure in SERPs and ultimately, it’s going to mean more long term success for your website.

Things to remember

Sure, you’ve got a lot on your plate but you’ll really appreciate having considered your SEO strategy in the early days. Here are a few things I recommend you spend a little time on:

Think about what your users are ‘typing’: If you’re hoping to get to number one position for a competitive keyword, you need to know it’s going to be hard. Really hard. Focusing on short tail keywords hoping you’re competitive enough isn’t going to cut the mustard. Instead, consider what users are likely to type to find a solution to their problem. Longer tail keywords tend to be more specific and less competitive. As an example, say you’re a company that sells kitchen appliances. It’s really unlikely you’re going to appear in any notable position in search results for the keyword ‘kettle’. But say you specialise in low energy super fast boiling kettles then keywords like ‘low energy quick boil kettle’ are going to be much less competitive and more relevant to the user at their point-of-purchase.

Do the basics: If you’re serious about making progress with SEO then your website should be built with SEO in mind and you need full control or at least the ability to change the key SEO content throughout the site. Some low cost or SaaS website production software is limiting and if you’re investing into a completely custom-built content management platform, you need to consider the structure and strategy for SEO at the very start. If you don’t consider this, you could have an array of problems when it comes to getting Google to crawl your site effectively. This is frighteningly more common than you might think. Here are a few basics to consider:

• Duplicate content will harm your website so invest time into crafting unique content and SEO data (titles, headers and meta etc) — make sure your website CMS allows you to change page content individually! Tools like Siteliner provide free analysis of your website and tell you what you need to fix
• Being mobile friendly is now standard, and expected by Google. But friendly isn’t always enough — creating a great experience for mobile users is going to drive engagement with your content
• Make sure your progress is measurable — Installing and having access to Google Web Master Tools and Analytics is vital. WMT can provide you with insight into your websites performance and also alert you to any issues when it comes to being crawled by Google
• Your website needs to be coded with high coding standards and needs to be fast, it’s a factor in Google’s interpretation of your website. Remember, if the user isn’t having a good experience, Google will know and they won’t like you
• If you’re serious about SEO, tools like MOZ and SEMRush can provide excellent insight into your website as well as those of your competition. They can also highlight potential opportunities, but you will need to fork it out!

PR is a simple resource of inbound links: Innovative startups often attract media attention. If you’re featured somewhere, make sure your getting a link back from the publisher and that that link is properly setup either with your brand name, URL or relevant alt text for your business.

While we’re on the subject of inbound links, Never buy them or fake them! This comes under the ‘black hat SEO’ banner. Google will rank your domain based on spam and if you have links from link farms or other websites with particularly high spam scores, you will most likely be penalized. The Penguin update saw to this. Link building should be organic, honest and relevant.

Don’t post content for the sake of it: It’s not always easy to create good content, so when you can’t don’t just throw something up. It’s better to invest in useful, rich, original content. Quality over quantity, every time.

Prioritize your tasks: SEO is long-haul and with limited budgets and time you’re not going to get everything done right away. It’s better to have a plan you stick to and chip away at the things you need to do regularly. Aim for the lower hanging fruit to get a quicker return.

This approach has another benefit — SEO is not an exact science and sometimes doing too many things at once makes it harder to identify what worked and what didn’t. Making small changes, measuring the results and learning from them helps you get a better understanding of how Google sees your website vs your competition, and how your users interact with you.