Startup owners have a lot to worry about. Starting a business successfully depends on so many factors. One of them is surely your SEO – founding and maintaining it is often a challenge for new business owners. If you don’t have a lot of experience, a simple guide can help you with the SEO basics and make sure you have a positive start. Fortunately, you’re in the right place. In this article, we’re going to present the best SEO checklist for startups, covering the main points of successful SEO practice.
Why SEO checklist for startups is important?
Checklists are a key to organization and a steady route to success. They help you avoid dysfunction and scattering of ideas, leading you to your goal. Therefore, an SEO checklist for startups is a great way to leave nothing to chance and don’t let competitors take away your share of customers and revenue.
Start with Google Analytics
The first thing you want to do is to find a tool to help you track your website’s progress. Google Analytics is the safest, most common way to get insight into the traffic, visitors info, popular pages, etc. The information you get from this tool will help you further develop your ideas and guide your SEO practice in the right direction.
Boost your WordPress
If you’re using WordPress, make sure you install the right plugin to simplify optimizing your content. Yoast SEO is the most common plugin and the one you can go to first. Yoast will help you boost your WP content by adding meta descriptions, SEO titles, and other details to make every page complete.
Deal with the keywords
Keywords are the essence of your content and a shortcut to your target audience. That’s why you need to invest time and effort into researching the most suitable keywords you can use in your content. The best way to find them is by using search tools. They can either be free or paid, depending on the features and tools they offer. Make sure you use a tool that can show you the most relevant keywords and similar suggestions, search volume, difficulty, etc. – all the metrics that will help you optimize your website in the best way possible.
Don’t forget long-tail keywords
For startups, researching long-tail keywords is quite important. These keywords are made of three or more words and are a great way of knowing your audience better. They tell you more about their needs and searches, which helps you better optimize your content and offer better-quality services and products. To find long-tail keywords, take a better look at suggestions you get when searching common keywords related to your niche. Furthermore, don’t forget that people often search for something online in a form of a question. Questions can be effective long-tail keywords that lead you to more informative results.
Create great content
Website accessibility and high-quality content are what make people stay on your website. However, even though it’s an obvious tip, it is something we need to include in this SEO checklist for startups. The ideas and information you share with the visitors, but also the way you present them are essentials of a successful SEO. Make sure the content you write has the following format characteristics:
- simple, easy-to-read sentences,
- headings and subheadings,
- the font size that is neither too big nor too small (at least 16pixels),
- bullet lists,
- bold and italic text.
All of these will make your pages easy to read and therefore more attractive for visitors.
Optimize your URLs
URLs are often considered a small detail that is not so important. However, the way you form your URLs can help you look more professional and make it easier for people to remember it. Firstly, be sure to use short URLs – they are easy to read and understand. More importantly – people will remember them better. Another important characteristic of your URLs should be the presence of keywords. Including important keywords will tell Google’s algorithm what a page is about, but also make your page appear more organized and readable.
Be active on social media
Social media networks have become an essential factor in marketing. People now use it not only to communicate with friends and family but find out about a new product, shop and order different services. Social media can help you reach customers and promote your content, but also do extensive keyword research. For that reason, we can’t help but mention it in this SEO checklist for startups.
Make sure your website is fast
One of the things you should regularly do is test how fast your website is. The speed and responsiveness of a website are what makes people stay or go somewhere else. For that reason, test the speed of your pages, and if the loading time is more than 3 seconds, make sure you reduce the time. You can do that by fixing the following:
- reduce the size of your images – images should be high-quality but not too big in size;
- reduce the number of videos you share – if you need to share multiple videos, be sure to hos them via a third party website;
- choose high-quality hosting.
Go mobile
Most of the internet searches happen through mobile phones nowadays. For that reason, one of the main steps of the SEO checklist for startups should be going mobile with your website. It’s a key step to a successful SEO, and a step forward to easily connecting to your target audience.
Remember that building a successful website takes time and effort. Constant improvements and following the main steps and methods will ensure a steady road to desirable results you’ve wanted since the beginning.