Starting your own business is a big deal. There’s a lot to think about and consider all the factors that affect your business’ success. One of these factors is certainly SEO – the online strategy that will improve the visibility and overall online presence of the business. Fortunately, experts have agreed to share the tips for entrepreneurs to best utilize SEO for startups. Read our article below and learn how to ensure growth and success, online and offline.
Reasons to invest time and money in the SEO for your business
To understand the reasons why SEO should also be your focus when setting up your startup, let’s go through the main benefits of every SEO strategy:
- increases traffic, which results in higher revenues;
- it helps you understand your target audience, and recognize customer behavior ;
- once you understand your customers, you can make better business decisions;
- well-optimized SEO increases consumer trust, and therefore increases the value of your business on the internet;
- helps to build brand equity;
Building your SEO strategy is an essential step nowadays. Startups are only complete and successful when both online and offline presence and well-optimized and accurate.
Best ways to utilize SEO for startups
Now we’re going to list all the best SEO practices that are applicable to almost every startup. If you’re new at this, take a closer look at this guide and start building your SEO today.
Make sure you know your goals
Before you do anything else, make sure you know why you’re doing it. Setting clear goals and outcomes is the first step of every strategy. However, make sure you set realistic goals and be reasonable about the future of your business. Consider your efforts and your budget, and align the SEO goals with ‘offline’ business goals. These two need to complement each other so you can actually see the results.
Don’t think yourself different
When it comes to successful SEO, you need to understand the way Google works. As a startup, you might feel you need more or less effort than a large business. However, that’s not entirely true. Google sees all the business in the same way – it doesn’t matter how big your business is. What’s more important is the way people are connected to your content, and how relevant are the searches to your website. Therefore, don’t compare yourself to a big brand or company – you’re all in this together, and good SEO practices are applicable to everybody.
Set a budget
To achieve the best results, you need to set a budget for your SEO strategy. It’s a step many startups simply overlook, which leads to disappointments and wasted time. The budget surely depends on the size of your business, and how much you can afford. Generally, most startups invest around $1000 per month, so it’s somewhere between the $500-5000 SEO budgets range. What’s more important is that the money you plan to spend is utilized properly, and gives the best results.
Build a good website
An optimized website is the foundation of every SEO practice. It’s important to start with a well-functioning website and then build other features and content along the way. If you’re inexperienced with these technical tasks, make sure to hire someone who knows how to do it right.
Make the website mobile-friendly
As most of the Google searches happen through mobile phones nowadays, it is important to make your website mobile-friendly. Accessibility is essential for a good customer experience, and this feature is one of the main steps.
Do a thorough keyword research
One of the main ways to utilize SEO for startups properly is to do extensive keyword research so you know how to optimize the content. There are several ways to do this – by exploring customer’s behaviors, through competitive analysis, etc. You can mix different approaches and use tools that can help you with the research. Either way, make sure to find keywords that are relevant to your business and your target audience. Also, the services or produces you provide need to be connected as well.
Optimize the content
Creating high-quality content depends on different factors. The information you share needs to be compatible with your services and products, and provide answers or solutions to your customers. Furthermore, it needs to be well-optimized. Using the right keywords appropriately will help you find the way to potential customers by increasing the ranking of your pages.
Don’t forget the off-site SEO
Doing everything well on the website will not serve a purpose if people can’t find it. After doing on-site optimization, you need to find a way to connect the right people to your content. And one of the best ways to do this is through link building. Getting backlinks on the different websites is proof your content is worth reading and increases the value of your website.
However, that’s not always easy to do, especially if you want to avoid black hat techniques. The essential step is creating first-rate content that someone truly wants to share with others. Also, the technical part is important, too – include high-quality photos and graphics, and make the page aesthetically attractive. The information or story you share needs to be original and exclusive, which will surely bring organic backlinks in no time.
Think of this as a process
As you might see, there’s no magic wand to help utilize SEO for startups the best way possible. It is a process that needs to be adjusted to each business in particular, following the basic guidelines. However, one thing is sure – hard work and invested time surely pay off!