Should Startups Pursue SEO: Tips, Tricks, And Challenges For Growth

The business ecosystem has benefitted from the advent of enterprising and innovative startups. The last decade has seen startups spring up in various industry niches and generate a lot of financial promise, employment, and new technologies.

Professionals that felt that they were bogged down in established companies took a leap of faith and set up their own businesses.

While startups have had a lot of success, it should also be pointed out that many of them failed because of unprofitable business models and a lack of a clear strategic vision.

The rise of digital marketing can be in many ways related to the rise of the startup culture. The focus on digital platforms, both search and social, can help startups promote their business aggressively.

In this resource, we are going to focus on why startups should pursue Search Engine Optimisation as a viable digital marketing growth strategy.

Additionally, we are going to look at the best SEO tips and tricks that startups should explore. Finally, we will conclude by talking about some of the challenges that startups need to contend with as far as their SEO is concerned.

Startups and SEO: A Match Made in Heaven?

What is the number one problem that startups operate with?

The short answer to this question is ‘Resources’. Limited finances are a hallmark of startups especially when they are in their infancy. Thankfully, SEO does not require a lot of money.

Startups should explore digital marketing strategies that can help them generate returns long after they have made the investment and effort. Kind of generates success while being on an autopilot mode all the time.

SEO can help you do that. In this section, we are going to look at some of the major reasons why startups should consider SEO as a growth strategy-

• Digital-Driven Consumer Behavior- 

Even before the pandemic hit us, consumers were increasingly drawn to search engines and social media. These digital platforms became second nature thanks to the pandemic. Startups that are not focused on exploiting search engines and social media risk not finding target audiences for their business. A majority of individuals start their journey on search engines.

• Finding Target Audiences Online- 

Every purchase query is likely to begin from a search result on Google or any of the other search engines. When your customers are searching for a product in your niche, you would want your startup to feature right there on the search results. This not only aids visibility and awareness but can drive direct sales from SEO. This contributes to your startup’s revenues.

• Free and Consistent Organic Traffic- 

SEO is not like PPC. In other words, your ad will not stop showing on Google AdWords as soon as you exhaust your budget. SEO will help you generate passive and organic traffic to your website all the time. The high-quality links you built last year would still be driving targeted traffic to your website and contributing to sales even without you knowing about it.

SEO Tips to Help Startups Succeed with Traffic, Rankings, and Revenues

In this section, we are going to list some SEO tips that can help startups optimize digital marketing success in terms of increasing their website traffic, search rankings, and revenues.

• Have a clear and well-defined SEO strategy in place- 

What is it that you want to achieve from your SEO strategy? If you are just starting out, you need to ensure that you have the right KPIs in place. For example, ranking on top of Google’s search results for your target keywords in the first month might not be simple. You should rather focus on building awareness and visibility for your brand.

• Consider the time factor and how long are you willing to invest for- 

One of the major things that startups should understand as far as SEO is concerned is the time factor. With so much competition, you need to be patient when it comes to seeing real results. According to the top experts offering SEO Services Essex, you need to give it at least three to five months to start seeing results. Do not abandon SEO before that.

• Focus on quality content creation at all times to boost your SEO performance-

One thing that will always hold startups in good stead is quality content. This is your insurance to consistently perform well on search engines. Great content will boost your credibility, improve search rankings and allow you to generate natural backlinks for your content. This is something that startups should not compromise on. The best content gets the best results.

• Hire the best SEO agency to help you ace digital marketing-

There are two options that startups have. They can either set their own in-house SEO team or they can get an agency on board and outsource their SEO processes to them. For most startups, the second option makes a whole lot of sense. SEO agencies have several resources at their disposal and are better experienced to handle the concerns of startups better than in-house teams.

• Get high-quality backlinks for your website through guest posting- 

We mentioned in an earlier point how great content will help you gain backlinks. Backlinks are one of the highest-rated ranking factors for search engines. Startups need to build as many backlinks for their website pages as possible. Make sure that you are choosing high-quality and authoritative websites and publishers that enjoy stable and accurate website traffic.

How Startups Should Understand Keywords: A Brief Explanation

Startups should not make the mistake of thinking that SEO is something increasingly technical or difficult to manage. To be honest, it is more about logic and commonsense.

Rather than make the entire process complex and complicated, it is best to stick to the basics of SEO and try to set up the right foundation.

Startups need to process aspects of SEO from a simplistic angle. Startups need to figure out the keywords that their target audiences are using to search for information, learning, products, or services in their niche.

For example, if you are a startup producing vegan meal options in New York, then the following keywords are the ones you should be targeting-

• vegan food in NYC
• vegan meals NYC
• food delivery new york
• vegan food delivery new york city
• best vegan meal

Your potential customers are most likely to find you using search engines when they enter any of the above keywords. As a startup, you need to ensure that you are ranking for the above-mentioned keywords.

This means that you need to build great content and an interesting backlink profile to rank higher than your competitor. The higher you rank, the more clicks you will be getting for your website. These clicks will translate into sales queries, revenues, and profits!

There are plenty of SEO tools and software that can help you do keyword research. Pick keywords that have a sizable search volume. You need to pay attention to how keywords need to be present on-

1. Your Article Title
2. Meta Description
3. First Sub-Heading of the Webpage

Startups should think of keywords like blueprints that inform the algorithms of search engines. By having certain keywords, the algorithms are able to read what the web page is all about and then catalogue it accordingly.

SEO Content Creation Challenges that Startups Should Overcome

When it comes to SEO performance, content is everything. Without content, your SEO needle will not move. Startups need to understand that while technical optimizations play their role, your long-term SEO success can only be guaranteed if you are able to outperform your competitors in terms of quality content.

• Firstly, you need to create content according to your target audiences and their sensibilities. This means that the style should be one where you are trying to have a two-way channel of communication between the startup and its target audiences. You can start by creating a buyer’s persona and then figuring out the communication accordingly.
• Secondly, startups need to pay attention to something important called ‘search intent’. This is the point where your startup will be engaging with the customer during their journey. Your content should match the search intent and be appealing to the customer. Some people might just be at the learning stage and not the buyer’s stage. This is what is meant by search intent.
• Thirdly, the content publishing timelines should be clear and arranged. You need to be clear about what type of content you are going to publish. Remember that search engines love regularity. You need to mix up the content between blog articles, how-to blogs, detailed guides, listicles, videos, and even short-form content. Explore and experiment between the different content types and forms for best results.

The Bottom Line

While startups are not too hesitant when it comes to investing in Social Media Marketing services, they still have their doubts as far as SEO is concerned. That should not be the case. SEO helps startups set up the best digital foundation. With SEO, startups can expect a lot of digital traction, awareness, and visibility. If you are a startup founder that has some specific questions on SEO running through your mind, please let us know in the comments below.