SEO for Startups: 8 Step-by-step guide for Startup Founders

Get thousands of traffic to your startup business website absolutely for free – this wasn’t for grabbing your attention, it’s true! Paid sponsorship or PPC ads will bring traffic to your startup website – for sure. But the question is – is it worth it? Do you really want to spend a big amount of money on something new like this? But what else to do? – you ask. What if I tell you there’s a better alternative – SEO for startups? This way you can get a lot of online visibility with spending no or little to no money.

Today I’m going to talk about everything about the cheapest way to build your startup business. Here I’ll be giving a step-by-step guideline on the best SEO for startups strategies. 

Grab a coffee and read till the end. This article contains all the steps, tricks, and tools in detail you need to grow your startup with SEO. I’m about to save you a fortune. You’re welcome!

What Is SEO for Startups?

You can be a millennial or Gen Z, at this day, I guess no one has ever heard of SEO. I see everyone’s adding ‘SEO expert’ in their bios – is it the new cool? I don’t know but I’m sure most of them don’t know much of it. 

What is SEO? A short form of Search engine optimization, SEO is the sorcery of a content wizard who can place an article at the top of search engine results like Google, Bing, or Yahoo. 

Here’s a scoop in simple terms – let’s say you search for something on Google. There you’ll see some articles popping in front of you. You’ll most likely click on the top results, right?

But what’s the chance of a startup business website being on there? Zero – unless they pay for the first spots or optimize their content. SEO for startups helps their website climb up those rankings and get more clicks by organic human visitors.  

So is SEO some kinda trick? – well! Put it like some pure skill!

The Benefits of SEO for Startups

SEO for startup business is free if you are an SEO expert. But if you are not, it’s not absolutely free. You may need to hire an expert who’ll help you rank your website on top results. This is some kind of investment.

Now the question arises – why should startups invest in SEO instead of PPC or something? Valid question! It’s because SEO strategy for startups can be a game changer in more than one way. 

Let’s see why!

1. Increased Online Visibility

Starting from the obvious – SEO gives a startup a huge online presence. It could never have such visibility without SEO – unless the owner’s some big-shot celebrity or the product is something crazily unique and innovative. As most of the startups are something on existing ideas, you can understand the importance of SEO for startups.

For example, one of our clients got 769% increase in the organic traffic, resulting in total 51,705 page views – just in a period of a year!

2.   Credibility and Trust

Let’s say you started a tech startup with new products or services, how many people will trust you? Not so much! SEO for tech startups will change the game here. It’s proven that people trust websites that show up on top.

Also if you search for a product, what website will you trust more? – The one organically ranking higher on search engines or the one with a sponsored tag? – you know the answer!

3. Cost-effective Marketing

SEO for startup business is the cheapest way a founder can go. Traditional advertising definitely works nicely – you’ll get millions of traffic. But that’ll also cost thousands of dollars. Can you ignore that? SEO is free – if you know it all.

Even if you don’t know, hiring an SEO expert will cost you only a little bit. Sure you can ignore that. How will it feel to have 24/7 salesmen working for you online?

4.  More Market Share

Ranking on search engine results is like being the topper of the class. You get extra attention and respect. When a startup from Primelis, NYC gets to rank high, more percentage of viewers click on the website and buy from it.

None cares about when the business has started its journey or how big of a company it is. Ranking high with SEO for startup Primelis gives it a significant edge in the market.

5.  Targeted Traffic

For targeting specific people with specific keywords, SEO services for startups are a great weapon. It allows you to reach those people who are looking for the products of your startups. 

6.   Higher Conversion Rate

Getting a lot of traffic is not much of a use if they don’t buy your service or product. So SEO for startup business gives more possibility of the visitors converting into customers. 

Does SEO Work for Small Businesses?

For any small business or startup, SEO is no doubt the best. Then why are you sitting on the fence? Thinking if it’ll really work or not? Trust me – I’m not suggesting it only because it’s cheaper, it works too. How do you think these online big businesses grew from being a startup?

Do startups need SEO? Duh! Look around, every small business is using SEO for startups to grow. Don’t they know what they are doing? – pretty sure they do! 

And if you are a small business with a physical store, let’s say a new restaurant, make local SEO for startups your bff. We look for everything online, even the departmental store in our neighborhood. So here’s where local SEO for small businesses gets you discovered.

SEO has nothing to do with your business being large or small. It’s all the game of playing with keywords and adding value to the existing data on the internet. 

So wanna see some quick growth? Try SEO for startup on a budget or a small business.

Misconceptions About SEO for Startup Business

Ugh! We humans! – did we leave anything not surrounded by myths and misconceptions? So before you try out SEO services for startups, let me make something clear real quick.

1.    Anyone Can Do It

Well, sure, anyone can learn SEO. But using it on any startup business and seeing growth takes skill and time. You can say “Anyone can cook” – sure, but not everyone is a gourmet chef. Got the point?

2.    One and Done

This is the most common misconception about SEO for startups. Some founders think they’ll post one SEO-optimized content and voilà! Traffic will rain down on the startup. Sorry, that isn’t how it works. SEO is an ongoing process that needs to be consistently applied to your website to grow big.

3.    SEO is Magic

I don’t know why everyone thinks of SEO as the magic bean. You’ll sow it and see it touching the sky overnight. No, it’s not like that. SEO for startup business needs optimizing the site, creating quality content, keeping consistency, and seeing the growth slowly.

SEO for Startups: Step-by-step Guide for Startup Founders

Finally! We reached the most interesting part of this article where you’ll learn A to Z on SEO for startups. Just by following all these steps exactly as I say, you can grow your startup from zero. Before we get to the best SEO for startups guidelines, are you ready for the money raining on you? Yes? – then let’s start!

Step 1: Understand Your Audience

How to do SEO for startups? I say you start by knowing your audience.

Imagine talking to your friend in a foreign language they don’t understand. That’s what happens when you don’t understand your audience. 

What’s their age range? What languages do they speak? What generations are they from? What locations are they from? What is their demographic info? What devices do they use to search? What are they looking for – a quick fix or a deep knowledge? What are they interested in? Even what kind of music genre do they like? – everything! 

No, don’t spy on them! Just do some research on the users or customers of the existing products of your niche. This info will help you to design your website according to their choice. You can even design the content in a tone they understand and like more.

Also, you can design your website suited to their preferred aesthetics. The benefits are endless. So at the first step of SEO strategy for startups, know who your audience is.

Step 2: Keyword Research

SEO for startups or any other business gets carried on this one step of Keyword research. This is considered to be the most important step for free SEO for startups. In this step, you need to find out the words or phrases one potential customer searches online to get existing products like yours. These are called keywords. Pretend you are the customer – what would you search for? This is what you’ll look for in keyword research for SEO.  

You’ll need to make a list of all the relevant keywords that more people are searching for. That’s not all. An SEO strategy for startups is you need to find keywords with less keyword density (KW). Many other factors are involved too.  

Sounds so intimidating? I feel you, keyword research for SEO for startups is a super tough and time-consuming step – but not anymore! Thanks to some geniuses. Now we don’t have to do it all manually. We have the best tools for SEO for startups specifically built for keyword research. You can use any of them according to your choice.

Here are some Keyword Discovery Tools for SEO:

1. KWFinder 

2. Ahrefs Keyword Finder

3. SEMRUSH

Step 3: Content Generating or On-page SEO for Startups

Now that you are done with your keyword research for SEO for startup business, time to create some content like blogs. Are you a good writer? Yes? Start writing using all those keywords. Don’t panic if you are not so good! There are a lot of  SEO agency for startups, hire one.

Or if you are searching SEO for startup on a budget, just hire a good writer who knows SEO – simple! Here are some tips on How to do SEO for startups by content in case you decide to do it on your own.

• Focus Keyword

Choose a focus keyword that your content will be based on. Don’t forget to select something with high traffic and low keyword difficulty to do SEO for startup company.

Still sippin’ on your coffee? Guess you love it. Let’s say you are thinking of writing content on it. But you don’t know how to choose a keyword for SEO. Not for long!

Go to any keyword research tool. Search the basic first thing coming to your brain – coffee! Now thousands of keywords will pop up on your screen. Doesn’t matter if you are using a paid or free keyword tool for SEO – you’ll see KD (keyword difficulty) and traffic volume for sure!

Now look for the keywords having 0-40 KD maximum – best to keep it less than 30. Oh, I see 3! Now look for the one keyword with the highest volume from these 3. Got the one? It’s ‘coffee shops near me’. 

We didn’t choose ‘coffee near me’ – KD says almost impossible to rank. We also didn’t choose ‘whipped coffee’ despite having the same KD as our chosen one. Why? – ‘coffee shops near me’ had a better traffic volume. That’s how you can choose your main keyword having a balance of KD and volume. To think of that, it’s kinda fun to do SEO for startups.

• LSI Keywords

Have you checked out the best tools for SEO for startups for keyword research? You can get the Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords from there. Also, you can get to Google’s autocompleting feature to get relevant long-tail keywords and the ‘related searches’ section at the bottom. Search your focus keyword ‘coffee shops near me’ and see the magic!

•  Title Tag

Must include your focus keyword in your title tag. Well, it’s enough for the algorithm but not enough for people to click on it. So, make the title eye-catching and interesting too as a part of the best SEO for startups.

• Page Headings

Headings not only make the content easier to read and understand, it’s important for the algorithm. Including your focus keyword into your headings really helps to do SEO – especially in H1.

• Paragraph Optimization

Include at least one keyword naturally in your paragraphs to do SEO for startups. Keep the paragraphs not more than 3-4 lines. You don’t want the readers to lose attention or get bored, do you?

• The Content Body

One of the Best solutions for SEO for startups is splitting the content body into different segments under different subheadings. This is not only helpful for readers, but it’s a great SEO strategy for startups too.  

• FAQ

Go to search engine pages and find out what people are asking about the topic. Add those questions here and try to give a complete answer to it. Be clear and quick. As an SEO strategy for startups, add LSI keywords to your answers.

• The Final Paragraph

Many people don’t use such a thing as a final paragraph. Use this as an opportunity to rank high by SEO for startup business. Have a final paragraph writing down a verdict or summary of what the whole content was about, what they learned there, and how they can use it. Don’t forget to add the focus keyword at least in the last 100 words.

• Multimedia

Add attractive images, videos, posters, and screenshots to your content. So does it mean adding celebrity pictures will work? – nope! You have to add multimedia relevant to the topic only to do SEO for startup company.

• Image Optimization

Wanna know how important image optimization is for doing SEO for startups? Let’s say you are selling something online. Your content couldn’t make it to the top. But when people search for images, your website can rank in there. So rename the files having the proper keywords. Also, don’t forget to add the ‘alt text’. 

• Long-form Content

The longer the content is, the higher the chance it has to rank. No, I didn’t come up with it – it’s a proven SEO tip for startups. So even if you can’t make crazy long content, at least make sure to give them a good enough word count.

• Internal Links

Let me share a great growth hack for your startup business. Using links of your one content to another content is a great way to do SEO for startup business website. Yes, exactly what I did a while ago! This will keep the readers exploring different pages of your website. Eventually, it’ll lead to a higher conversion rate.

• URL

Having the focus keyword in the URL of your content is a must for SEO for startup business. You can skip dinner, but not this one.

• Meta Description

This is the summary of your content that is shown to people in search results. So you know what you have to do. This is your one chance to compel people and make them click on your website – make it super interesting! And with that, your on-page SEO for startups is completed.

Step 4: Technical Optimization

You can have great content and all, but maintaining your website is also an important step for doing SEO for startups. It’s like keeping your engine running smoothly to go a long way. This may be a lil complex, so I always suggest hiring an SEO agency for startups.

This step includes things like optimizing website speed, mobile friendliness, XML sitemaps, responsive design, etc. An agency or SEO startup can help you with these things. What is a SEO startup? It’s like a business that provides all kinds of SEO services for startups or companies. There are many – take Adigic Digital as an example of a great one. 

Step 5: Off-page SEO for Startups

on-page SEO for startups is like creating optimized content. Many times we think this is enough to rank high on Google search results. Congrats if it does, but off-page SEO for startups is also a very important SEO technique for startups.

It’s like putting it out there in the virtual world and making other people endorse it by using it as a backlink in their content. It’s like a recognition. An SEO tip for startups to do off-page SEO is – make your content unique. Include new and authentic information that no other content has. That’s the best organic way to get backlinks for your website.

Step 6: Content Marketing

Let’s say we have SEO-friendly content – that too of great quality! Now who can help startups succeed? This is when the game of content marketing starts.

Your content needs to be marketed to the world. Thinking how will you do it? Hire a good SEO agency for startups – like we have a complete SEO solution starting from writing to marketing here in Adigic Digital.  

Step 7: Local SEO

This step is for you if your startup has physical stores too. In this step of SEO for startup business, you need to list your business on Google Maps, build local relationships, and make your happy customers leave good reviews online for your startup.

This will help with the local SEO and people in your area will start to discover you soon. Local SEO is a great way to increase conversion rates and build customer numbers.

Step 8: Voice Search Optimization

How many times did you use the voice search option 5 years ago? And how many times do you use it now? Did it just ring your bell how voice search has changed the way we find what we need now?

Google now has a ‘search a song’ option where you can find any song just by humming a lil – crazy! Even by humming out of tune – even more crazy! Searching anything by typing is so last season.

So now it’s important more than ever to know what people say to search for anything instead of writing. Be one step ahead of your competitors – optimize your website for voice search too.

Some Necessary SEO Audit Tools for Startups

Before I get into SEO audit tools for startups, I know what you are thinking! What are SEO audit tools? Well, think of these like digital detectives for your website. Check out some of the best free SEO audit tools and paid SEO audit tools for startups down below.

1. Google Search Console
2. SE Ranking 
3. Moz Pro

They keep an eye on the content quality, keywords, website speed, links, etc., and give a report card with suggestions on what space you have to improve.

In case you want some SEO tools specialized as backlink audit tools, these are the best platform for SEO for startups in the backlink category. 

1. Backlink Watch
2. Majestic Backlink Checker

Helpful Tips on SEO for Startups 

Do’s:

1. Get specific with long tail keywords. They may bring less traffic but are very useful to make your content rank high.

2. Input all your keywords naturally – it can’t sound like it doesn’t belong there.

3.  Use a conversational or friendly tone in the content, making the readers feel like they are talking to their friends.

4.  Make your content as comprehensive as possible. The reader should get the feeling they know everything now.

5.   Keep the readability as low as possible. Algorithms somehow love the contents that can be understood by all – children to adults!

6.   Keep posting SEO content consistently. Like I said before, it’s never one-and-done!

7.   Republish old posts, changing or adding new things. Play around with new keywords maybe – that’s all of some great SEO tips for your startups.

Don’ts:

1. A lot of keywords in the content will surely rank your website, right? Wrong! Keep keyword stuffing away from your content.

2. Does your website have an HTTP connection instead of HTTPS? It’s insecure – don’t keep it like that. Buy an SSL certificate.

3. People don’t have all their day to just get into your website. It shouldn’t take more than three seconds! Don’t turn a blind eye toward optimizing the page speed.

4. Never duplicate your content. Don’t post the same things again and again without changing and adding new information. This is a negative SEO strategy for startups.

5. The biggest problem I see writers do is focus too much on just the SEO. SEO for startup business also requires high-quality content. You may get a lot of traffic, but if the readers leave soon, the algorithm will start dropping your rank.

FAQs About SEO for startup business

Final Words 

You’re here? I’m impressed – you’ve got some patience! Exactly what you need to be an SEO expert. I’ve walked you through SEO for startups: step by step guide for startup founders.

This includes the importance of SEO for startups, SEO strategy for startups, all the SEO tools for startups, and some bonus SEO tips for your startup business. Being a founder, you can do SEO on your business website and see the magic in the growth of your startup. 

Now you can turn into an SEO expert besides being the founder – how cool is that! Feel the energy? Now start practicing everything I said about SEO for startups. Once you succeed in your SEO game, let me know how it feels to be on top of the world of search results.

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