15 Ways SEO Can Grow Your Start-up: Q&A with an SEO Specialist
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If you’ve been putting together a marketing strategy for your start-up or small business, you’ll probably have come across SEO.
Standing for Search Engine Optimisation, this is one of the newer marketing channels but also one of the most cost-effective — by appearing near the top of Google results for searches relevant to your business, you can drive traffic and potential customers to your website.
On 26 November we were joined by the Hive’s SEO Specialist Dan Rawley for a Twitter Q&A on how start-up businesses can use SEO to accelerate their growth. Dan runs the Hive SEO Service where he helps residents overcome the specific SEO challenges that start-ups face.
We had some great questions sent in — here’s a recap of Dan’s answers, along with some bonus insights!
1. Where is best to start with SEO?
This question echoes the feelings of many small businesses when it comes to beginning SEO work — it can be difficult to know where to focus your efforts at first if you’ve never done SEO, and that can be overwhelming!
Answer: “The best place to start is to work out you want to achieve from SEO, and then set some goals accordingly,” says Dan.
He suggests the best place to start is with keyword research — “finding out what your customers are searching for online”. Read on to learn about some free tools which will help you do just that!
2. What are the benefits of SEO? Why should I be doing it?
With limited marketing budgets, start-ups often have to choose carefully between which marketing channels to invest in — so it’s perfectly valid to ask why SEO should be a key part of your marketing strategy.
Answer: Dan gives two key reasons which show why SEO is so valuable. “SEO is a source of free, substantial traffic which makes it very appealing to small businesses”, he notes.
Secondly, there’s the opportunity cost from not investing in it: “As of 2019, almost two-thirds of UK SMEs were investing in SEO — so there’s a danger of being left behind by your competitors if you don’t adopt it into your marketing strategy!”
The same study also found that more small business owners cited SEO as the marketing channel that produced the best results than any other channel.
3. Why should I invest in SEO over PPC as a small business?
As both SEO and PPC (Pay Per Click) deal with search engine results pages, they often get lumped in together when discussing marketing strategies.
Answer: “SEO is a source of free, long-term traffic, so when marketing budgets are tight — as they often are for start-ups — SEO represents a more sustainable way of growing your business,” observes Dan.
In other words, if you’re able to push your website to the top of the search results with SEO, you can drive traffic continuously without any further expenditure, whereas PPC involves paying to keep your listing above the competition’s. In addition, the bids required to achieve this can be huge for competitive keywords.
4. How do I find what my customers are searching for?
Answer: “This is crucial to SEO success,” says Dan. “The good news is that free tools can give you what you need.
“Google Trends shows you which searches are popular right now, while browser extensions like Keyword Surfer will give you the average number of people per month searching that phrase.”
In our first question we learned keyword research was a great place to start for businesses new to SEO — so these tools are worth a try! However, Dan notes that you need to “make sure to set both tools to only the country you’re interested in,” — otherwise the data will be inaccurate.
In addition, “it’s also worth noting that COVID-19 has disrupted normal customer search demand in a lot of industries — if that’s the case for you, take monthly search averages with a pinch of salt and use Trends instead!” he advises.
5. Does my website/company name matter for SEO?
Deciding on a name for your start-up is hard enough without having to consider SEO too — but it’s important to check whether your company name could make it harder for you to appear in search results.
Answer: So does it matter for SEO? “Yes!” says Dan. “Check the Google search results page for your brand name — if there’s already large, established companies with the same name, or your name could mean something else, it’ll be difficult to rank for branded terms which is a big problem”.
6. What are the key metrics for measuring SEO success?
Answer: “At the very start, I’d look at impressions (how many times your website was visible in the search results) and rank or average position” advises Dan. “Later on, focus on organic traffic numbers — and then of course the end goal is an increase in organic revenue or conversions.”
7. As a startup, how can I get ahead of the competition instead of just copying what they’re doing for SEO?
While competitor analysis is an incredibly useful tactic, it’s also important to get an edge on your rivals by employing innovative methods.
Answer: Dan points back to Google Trends as a key tool for getting a run on the competition: “Tools like Trends let you spot SEO opportunities in real time — and act on them before the competition.
“Create content to fill new customer demand before anyone else, and use your business’ USPs to your advantage — which queries does your business best answer?” he adds.
8. Is there value in using SEO tactics that the big companies aren’t using? Isn’t there a reason they’re not using them?
Answer: “Yes, there is value in using different tactics,” Dan answers. The reason has to do with the SEO advantage the industry giants have: “Big companies have thousands of backlinks and higher budgets for technical and content than start-ups, so you need to be creative to outrank them — for example by focusing on more niche keywords initially, or ranking on image searches which are less competitive than regular Google results.”
9. What are some SEO dos and don’ts?
Answer: SEO ‘Do’s’ include “creating content with human users in mind, focusing on delivering good UX, and demonstrating your expertise in your field,” Dan begins.
As for the ‘Don’ts’? “Buying links, keyword stuffing, or signing up for dodgy guest posting services over email or LinkedIn,” he says. While backlinks are still very important for SEO, the quality and relevancy of the website linking to you matters much more than in the past, and keyword stuffing has similarly become an outdated technique.
10. What’s the best CMS for SEO?
A website’s CMS — or Content Management System — is the platform it is built on; in other words the system you use to upload content to your website.
Answer: “Personally I find Wordpress is the easiest to use and offers all the SEO features that start-ups need,” says Dan. “It lets you install free plugins for nearly everything.”
“That said, any CMS that gives you control over URLs, metadata and other fields you need to customise for SEO should be fine!” If you’re an ecommerce business selling products through your website, you may consider an alternative platform like Drupal or Opencart.
11. How can you target two different types of customer through the same content?
Answer: “This is tricky,” Dan admits. “You could either create two different pages, one for each customer segment — but you’d have to be very careful to differentiate the content enough to avoid cannibalisation.” This is when search engines can’t tell two pages apart because their content is so similar, which can lead to them showing users the wrong page for their needs, or even penalising you for spam by having duplicate content.
“Or you can break one page down into very clear sections so users can direct themselves to the relevant part,” adds Dan. You could do this by having navigation links at the beginning of the article.
12. How closely should we monitor bounce rates?
Bounce rates track the percentage of users who click off your website after viewing a page, as opposed to clicking on one of your other pages.
Answer: “For me, what constitutes a good bounce rate depends on the purpose of the page,” advises Dan. “If a page’s purpose is to quickly provide an answer, or users are visiting to quickly check something, then expect high bounce rates.”
In those cases you don’t need to worry too much about monitoring bounce rates, but other content requires more attention. “I’d focus more on bounce rates for key pages with a Call to Action on them,” says Dan. In other words, if your sales funnel relies on people following a path through your website after viewing a particular page, you need to monitor bounce rates carefully for that content to make sure it’s performing as needed.
13. What search volume does a keyword need to make it worth targeting?
A keyword’s search volume is the average number of times it is searched per month, rounded to the nearest ten. As noted earlier, while these averages are still a useful benchmark, in some industries heavily affected by COVID-19 this historical data may no longer be completely accurate.
Answer: While high-volume keywords are naturally attractive to business owners, this isn’t necessarily where they should start according to Dan.
“Keywords with 100+ searches per month will be very difficult for startups to rank for,” he says. “I’d recommend starting with lower-volume keywords initially (10–50 searches per month) while you build up your website’s strength by collecting backlinks, etc.”
There’s also another reason why search volumes aren’t the be-all and end-all for deciding which keywords to target. Dan describes one such case: “On rare occasions it may even be worth targeting a keyword with an average search volume of zero.
“That might sound crazy, but I worked with an SME in the past where, if even one person a year searched that keyword and converted, it paid for SEO for the entire next year!”
14. Is there a way to know which search phrases you should be targeting in a month’s time, rather than reacting to new phrases as they appear?
Answer: “Google Trends is great for this too,” according to Dan. “You can set the date range to five years in the past to see when demand for a keyword traditionally peaks in the year, and plan content in advance for when popularity will spike again!”
15. How important is website structure for SEO?
Answer: In a word? “Very”. “Start-ups can often design their website with SEO in mind, rather than trying to fix mistakes later on.”
When planning your website structure, says Dan, “it’s important to make sure key pages are as close to the homepage as possible in URL paths, and that no pages are islands that can’t be reached from another page.” This is because your website’s homepage is usually its most powerful page for SEO, and being associated with that page raises the profile of your other content.
Bonus: How should you set goals for SEO?
Answer: “Write down the benefits SEO brings, then decide which would be most effective for growing your business,” Dan advises. “Is it increasing traffic, or brand awareness, or sales?”
If you’re still struggling, don’t worry: “The Twinkl Hive SEO Service can help — we create a bespoke SEO strategy for each start-up we work with,” he adds.
If you’d like to learn more about the Hive SEO Service, or the other services provided to Hive residents, get in touch at hive@twinkl.co.uk or visit our landing page!
