Why is SEO important for your startup?

SEO is a process through which you make the most of your website’s existence by promoting its accessibility to as many people as possible. Even though it has always been found in the gray area of entrepreneurs’ concerns when it comes to promotion of their newly set up business, a rational start up company would never ignore its relevance if reaching the target audience is taken into consideration. It is evident that SEO is a time-consuming effort, however, if not done, a company may lose its relevance in the market over time. People nowadays, use the internet to get to know about anything they want to buy or avail services of, therefore it is important for a new business company to know what people search for, what are the search terms (keywords) typed in the search engines and, most importantly, which search engines are preferred by their targeted audiences.

The various factors with which SEO is executed are as follows:

• Optimizing the keywords that bring in the users who opt for the same things.
• Optimizing your website’s content- by having eye-catching titles, links that compliment what the website is about, by publishing unique and updated content, avoiding plagiarized content on the website since Search Engine can penalize a company for it.
• Optimizing web site’s codes- Since, Search Engine bots don’t read the content on a site but also its code.
• Improving the website’s accessibility to all of the devices through which visitors get access to internet services and search engines. For instance, users no longer are limited to desktops or laptops while using the internet since mobile phones have become the prominent device through which people log in for surfing.
• Managing backlinks because they are significant in evaluating the relevance of a page with Pagerank algorithm. Higher the number of backlinks a website has the more popularity and importance it will gain. Thus, increasing its accessibility to a random surfer.

If all of the required techniques are implemented efficiently, SEO can be a good cost effective way of marketing and gaining users for a startup company without affecting its funding and investments. However, one should know the difference between Blackhat SEO and Whitehat SEO and should always focus on the latter. Also, one should be aware of the fact that it cannot be an only reliable factor for receiving and converting the visitors into customers since Search Engines tend to change their algorithms constantly which might affect the conversion rate of visitors for a website. A business relying heavily on SE traffic can suffer major losses if the search engines stop sending visitors. But one need not fret if SEO is only one of the parts of his or her company’s marketing strategy.

Why SEO?

For a startup company, the foremost concern is to increase its sales or service by attracting users or customers, which itself is a tedious task. There are various methods through which the doors of gathering attention could be opened. Advertising in newspapers, magazines, flyers, direct emails, telemarketing, pay per click ads, email marketing, content marketing, etc. are ways through which a startup can approach its target customers. However, a budding business venture which is usually in need of the increase in funds may fall short on balance if paid marketing is the only method adopted for solidifying its presence and relevance in the realms of entrepreneurship. Hence, it needs to use some cost effective techniques through which a startup can gain the audience. In this era of search- engine and social media habituated audience; startups can use Search Engine Optimization as an effective method of increasing their customers by optimizing the visibility of its website on famous search engines.

Key Benefits Of SEO For a Startup:

1. It is good for your business visibility and branding. 2. Provides credibility to your business 3. SEO has one of the best ROI’s in advertising.

Originally published at www.digitaloitte.com on June 9, 2017.