Every business needs SEO, and startups are not the exception.
Wondering why SEO for Startups is so important? They are new in the market, are looking to create some noise, and have limited cash resources.
Hence a solid (no shortcut) SEO strategy is their best bet of generating organic quality inbound leads.
Many entrepreneurs underestimate the importance of SEO for startups, mainly because they are focusing on quick wins, on strategies that can bring immediate results. They forget that a startup will not be a startup forever and needs a long-term and sustainable marketing strategy to grow the business.
It is true that SEO is a long-term game, but when done right, starting from day 1 it can give you a competitive edge, without necessarily draining your marketing budget.
In this blog, we are gonna share a few tips to help you leverage the power of SEO for Startups. But before we do that, it is essential to know about the benefits.
Benefits of SEO for Startups
1. Brings you customer data
Startups are new to the market and may not know much about their customers. SEO can help them gather precious data which can be used to understand their target audience’s interests, motivations, and problems, which will enable them to draft future business strategies.
2. Cost-effective way to get higher traffic and conversions
Launching your SEO from scratch isn’t as difficult as it sounds. Most of the SEO for Startups practices are free, and the ones that are not, are lower cost than most paid advertising strategies. What you do need to invest, is time to learn SEO tactics, work on your content and optimizations. The time investment can easily yield high-quality traffic and conversions.
3. Helps you build trust and a long term audience
Properly implemented SEO is one of the best and most affordable ways to build trust, gain awareness, and brand equity. It helps startups understand the audience and serve them the content they want. Create high-quality, relevant content that other reliable sources would like to link to and you’ll be rewarded with improved rankings and higher organic traffic.
Here are 5 tried and tested SEO for Startups practices that can help you create a simple, effective, and evergreen strategy:
1. Define your SEO goals
Good rankings are not an SEO goal but a result of SEO done right. Align your SEO goals with your business marketing goals to save time, effort and maximize your ROI.
Define clear goals that you want to attain in the next quarter/year. They can be increasing search traffic, lead generation, average time spent on your website, brand awareness, improving bounce rate. Once you have defined your goals, make sure they are measurable.
For instance, you can’t achieve “more leads” unless you give a clear context to “more”. Make it ‘30% more leads in the next quarter’ or ‘50% more leads in the year’ to be able to fairly assess your performance.
2. Conduct Keyword research
Keyword research sets up the foundation of a solid SEO for startups strategy. It is a cost-effective strategy for Startups to understand and establish a presence in the market. When done right, it helps your content get discovered and shared by the right audience.
A few tips to keep in mind while doing keyword research – Understand the search intent, the niche demand behind the product/service you’re launching, and see how it translates into keywords,. Focus more on commercial keywords to fasten your lead generation.
You can use KatLinks keyword research tool to save you time and effort.
- It finds keywords you are already ranking for
- Suggests keywords based on a seed keyword
- Discovers keywords your competitors are ranking for
3. Lookout for SEO tools for startups
Startups run on tight budgets and need effective SEO tools to track, measure, and analyze data. The good news is that there are several options available in the market which can be used to optimize your on-page SEO, link building, content planning, etc.
KatLinks is an easy-to-use and affordable SEO tool which does it all – Backlink Monitoring, Keyword Rankings, On-Page Audits, Anchor Usage, Backlink Planner, and a lot more.
4. Remember Content is King
Unlike established businesses, startups don’t have the resources to churn out high volumes of content. Hence they should focus on quality.
Focus on two or three detailed, informative articles optimized with your most relevant keywords. This will help you generate quality traffic and increase brand exposure.
Do competitor analysis to understand how they are using content to improve SEO and attract organic traffic.
It is important to have SEO editorial guidelines — use keywords naturally, optimize your content for readability, have a fast-loading website, work on the internal linking structure, optimize your on-page SEO, and the content will do wonders for your search engine rankings.
5. Unleash the power of Backlinks
Search Engines may have evolved, but they still can’t ignore the power of quality backlinks. Backlinks are an excellent way for businesses, especially startups, to grow their digital footprint, get more eyeballs on their brand, boost their rankings and improve authority.
Among a wide variety of backlink options, you can leverage industry directories, press releases, and interviews on blogs to get some clean backlinks.
KatLinks has the Backlink Opportunities tool, which is an easy and efficient way to help you find and manage a collection of high-quality, easy-to-get backlink opportunities.
Conclusion
SEO for Startups is an ongoing process that can generate long-term results. Get the basics right and you’ll be able to strengthen your marketing potential, connect with the right audience, and have an edge over your competitors.
