SEO Guide for Startups: The Secret Ingredient for your Business in 2024

Managing a business or a startup is not as easy as it looks from the outside. There goes a lot of effort and concerning factors into the process. One such factor of consideration is SEO for startups who are trying to rank higher, gain more visibility, and increase their traffic organically. MadHawks SEO's unique approach to businesses across the globe is enabling businesses to integrate SEO into their strategies and get better results. 

But why SEO? For an emerging or even an established business, SEO is one of the most important factors as it helps you to achieve all the above-mentioned goals. It allows your target audience to see your brand more clearly. 

Focusing on SEO for business from the very beginning will help you have a competitive advantage and a head start in the overall competitive landscape of your niche. Moving on, there are different SEO for startups that can be integrated for better results. Before we get into that, let’s understand what exactly is SEO. 

Untangling SEO For Stratups

SEO or search engine optimization is a set of activities and strategies being integrated to increase the visibility, generate more traffic, and ranking your website higher in the search results. 

It is a crucial aspect as your business is competing against numerous other entities offering similar services. Some are ranking higher than others in the search results leveraging the same SEO strategies. 

One key aspect to understand here is that SEO is a constant effort and not Jack’s magic beans! With constant efforts and dedication with SEO you can see results and growth in your business. 

Why Include SEO Services for Startups? 

Establishing the basics of SEO, let’s move on to understanding the benefits of incorporating SEO for business. Here are some of the most common benefits that you can avail. 

• Enhanced visibility

• Increased organic traffic 

• Higher clicks on the website

• Reduced CPC (Cost-per-click)

• Higher conversion rates

• Brand recognition and awareness 

• Higher ranking in SERPs

Furthermore, here are some stats for you to have a better understanding of why to include SEO for startups. 

• 54% of website traffic with organic SEO strategies

• 1000%+ traffic than social media driven by SEO

• 50% of users search for products before investing 

• 55% of the shopping experience is online

• 70% of searchers don’t scroll beyond first page

• 75% of marketers say SEO is better than PPC 

• 50% of marketers have organic ROI than other marketing channel 

• 45% of searches are for local businesses on Google 

• 85% of customer acquisition cost reduced by SEO  

SEO for Startups Categorized

In general, SEO practices are categorized into three different categories namely: 

• On-page SEO

In on-page optimization, it includes copies and images available on the website. These are to be optimized as per the trending keywords, as on-page SEO is mainly driven by these keywords. 

Furthermore, there are different segments involved in this category: 

• Title tag

• Heading tag 

• URL structure 

• Description links

• Internal linking 

• Image titles

• Alt texts

• Canonical tags

• Image size 

Furthermore, having on-page SEO will have a direct impact on the visibility of your content in the search results. Here you are required to optimize your website content based on the user’s search intent, readability, relatability to the query. Additionally incorporating featured snippets plays a major role. 

The main objective of on-page SEO is to offer the user/reader enhanced user experience and relatable content to have a connection with your brand. 

• Off-page SEO

The next category is off-page SEO and as the name implies these SEO efforts and strategies are carried out off-page. This includes external link building for offering your website and the content enough credibility. It further includes social media channels as well for brand representation.

It also includes the following:

• Linking 

• Local SEO

• Public relations 

• Influencer marketing 

• Reviews

• Content publishing 

These points combined together provide you with enhanced off-page SEO efforts.  

• Technical SEO

Lastly, technical SEO is the contributing factor for helping your business rank high on the search results. Since the name is technical SEO, it focuses on the technical aspects of your website. Major factors involved here are: 

• Loading speed of website

• Security 

• Crawlability (Google crawling)

• Link validity

• Unique content 

• Content structure 

Tips of SEO for Business to Follow

Here are some of the most common SEO for startups to follow for better results.

• Invest in local SEO

To get better results and make your brand visible to the local audience, start investing in local SEO. This will help your brand have more local visibility and users which will be a boost for your business.  

It will further help the search engine understand your target market and allow you to reach them with certain optimizations in your content and strategies. For this you can start by creating a Google My Business profile, generate local content, get local reviews and other such strategies. 

• Content Marketing

This allows you to create unique content and help the audience connect & engage with this content. This engaging content will help the users convert into customers and will also draw others to your brand. 

This can range from social media posts, blog posts, videos,podcasts to newsletters, white-papers, case studies, and infographics. 

The key aspect here to consider is that this content that you are generating should be engaging, unique and relevant to your target audience. 

• PPC for Brand Visibility & Conversion rates

Another aspect to consider is investing in PPC (Pay-per-click) or Paid marketing which allows you to run paid campaigns or ads for a targeted audience. These campaigns are designed in such a way that they have a clear, strong communication and messaging for the audience with a strong CTA for them to take an immediate action. 

• Analytics & Constant Optimization

There is no point of implementing any SEO strategies if you are not analyzing the results and optimizing the strategies and content based on the observations. This is one of the most crucial aspects of SEO for startups as in the early stage there is a lot to learn. From constant exposure you will learn new strategies everyday and are required to optimize your content as per that. 

For this you can also integrate certain analytics tools that can help you analyze the data within minutes and offer you a detailed summary of it all. 

• Focus on User Experience

For any business, be it established or a startup, user experience is a must. If you are focused on offering a unique user experience, the chances of conversion increase and so does your website traffic. 

A seamless user experience will help your brand leave a good impression in the user’s mind and they will circle back to your website to have the same experience again. 

• Competitor Analysis

Lastly, always do competitive research and analysis. Look at what your competitors are doing, the keywords they are targeting, the campaigns they are running, and what kind of experience they are offering the users. This will help you not to repeat the same mistakes that they did, you get to learn from their mistakes. 

Implementing SEO for Startups

When implementing SEO for startups it consists of six basic and most important steps described below. 

Step 1: Define Your Goals

Before you invest or strategize anything, sit with your team and SEO experts, and define what you wish to accomplish from the SEO efforts. Define what your goals are: 

• Increasing the visibility

• Brand recognition

• Generating more traffic

• Ranking higher in the search results

• Creating a brand image 

• Generating sales and leads 

• Increasing the conversion rate 

Once you have defined the goals of your SEO efforts, you need to sit and set some short-term, realistic goals that would help you track the progress of your SEO efforts and give you analytics as well. 

Step 2: Targeted Keyword Research

The second step is to identify the keywords that you are going to target for your on-page SEO efforts. These targeted keywords would be incorporated into the content of your website, be it blog, or headings. 

These targeted keywords will further help your content rank in the search results once a relevant keyword or search query is entered. Furthermore, one thing to consider is that these keywords should be used in relevance only and not stuffed just to get the website ranking higher. 

Step 3: Planning Content

Next step is to plan your content for the website. This doesn’t mean adding random keywords in an article, instead this requires you to have a clear understanding of the user mindset and preferences and generate unique, engaging and relevant content.

Step 4: Technical Optimization 

Technical aspects or the technical SEO comes into play where you have to analyze the speed of the webpages loading, indexing of your web pages, Google crawling, meta description, and other tags of the website. 

Fixing all the technical aspects will contribute towards having an enhanced user experience and allow your audience to have a seamless experience. 

Step 5: Linking

As the next step start creating backlinks or add external links to offer credibility, and support to your website and the content. Furthermore, it will allow you to have more visibility and the user can interact with your content on different platforms which would further increase the presence of your business. 

For this you can also leverage different social media platforms and start publishing your content on different platforms, or add influencer marketing as well. 

Step 6: Analysis and Optimization 

The last step is to analyze and optimize your website and content regularly as per the feedback or reviews. It allows you to constantly modify your content and website as per user’s relevance and requirements. 

Final Tips

From the above discussion it is evident that having SEO for startups is a crucial aspect to be incorporated. However, it can be overwhelming for you to handle all these tasks single-handedly. Hence, it is advisable to incorporate a marketing agency or an SEO agency that can help you manage all these aspects. 

MadHawks being a digital marketing agency is well-equipped with SEO experts to offer you advanced SEO strategies and drive results for your business. Furthermore, with MadHawks you get timely updates on the results and get constant results. 

To read more about the trends in SEO you can download our untangling report and have detailed insights about all the major updates and trends ongoing in the SEO and other divisions of digital marketing that are beneficial for your business. 

For more information and assistance get in touch with our SEO experts today! 

FAQs

1. What is one way startups can acquire customers using SEO?

Using SEO, startups can acquire customers by increasing their brand visibility by offering relevant content to the audience. You can also leverage social media platforms to engage the audience with your content and generate leads. 

2. Is SEO important for a startup?

SEO is important for all businesses, be it a startup or an established business, as it allows you to increase your brand visibility, drive more traffic to your website, generate more leads, and generate more revenue as well. 

3. Why startups should invest in SEO?

For a startup it is essential to invest in SEO as it allows you to get the customer's attention and offer them with relevant content that can help them bond with your brand and engage with the content as well. 

4. Why do small businesses need SEO?

Small businesses need SEO to get more visibility in the search results, generate more traffic, generate more revenue, and get more leads for the business. It also allows you to get your business rank higher in the search results. 

5. Can a business survive without SEO?

It becomes difficult for a business to survive without SEO, as SEO is the backbone of it all. Without this it will be very difficult for you to get your brand into notice and get high ranking, drive more traffic to your business, and generate high revenue from your brand’s traffic. Hence, it is advisable to invest in SEO efforts for all businesses. 

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