SEO for Startups

Low-Cost Ways to Boost Website Traffic Fast

S E O and startup concept.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of implementing strategies to boost your website’s ranking on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. By using SEO tactics, you can signify to search engine’s complex algorithms that your website is trustworthy, informative, and a resource for high-quality content.

Regardless of the type of startup you’re launching, SEO can be an effective marketing tool. That’s why we developed this guide to help you improve your startup SEO and cash in on this method of digital marketing — for free.

Why Is SEO Important For Startups?

The best way to market a business today is — without a doubt — internet marketing. SEO is a powerful digital marketing tool that can benefit your business in several ways. Not only is improving SEO free, but it can also improve your click-through rate (CTR) and build trust among customers. The bottom line, if you aren’t optimizing your website to achieve a higher ranking, you are missing out on potential customers and increased revenue.

8 Ways Startups Can Improve SEO

Ready to improve your website’s SEO? These are eight examples of SEO tactics that are commonly used, completely free to implement, and produce results.

1. Create a User-Friendly Website

A user-friendly website is a key to improved SEO and customer retention. Customers don’t want to utilize a website that isn’t user-friendly, and if your website is difficult to navigate, they will most likely move on to your competitors.

One way you can improve the user-friendliness of your website is by ensuring that pages load quickly. With the internet moving faster than ever, consumers expect your website to do the same. A slow website can increase the number of users that leave your website, otherwise known as your abandonment rate. Tools like Pingdom or Google’s PageSpeed Insights can help you assess your current page speed and provide suggestions on how you can improve it.

Additionally, be sure to make your website mobile-friendly. It’s easy to forget when developing your website that it should be optimized for use on mobile devices; however, failure to accommodate mobile users could be a detriment to your SEO and cost you valuable customers.

Recommended: Want to build a quality business website? Check out our review of the best website builders for small business.

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2. Establish Your SEO Strategy and Goals

Like many things, improving your website’s SEO has a higher chance of success if you have a well-crafted SEO strategy and clear goals. Optimizing your website is a big undertaking, especially if you haven’t worked on SEO before. Establishing your goals and the method you’ll use to achieve them is crucial.

Identifying the tools available to you and understanding their purpose as well as how they can be used in the context of your website is the first step. Depending on your goals and your startup’s specific needs, you can start developing an SEO strategy that will help you achieve your objectives.

3. Conduct Keyword Research

Google recognizes the use of commonly searched words and phrases and tries to provide readers with the most relevant information possible. Keyword research allows you to identify those words and phrases in order to boost your search engine ranking and increase your site visibility.

A simple way to begin researching keywords is to use Google itself. Type in a phrase related to your website and take note of the related search terms that are listed in the dropdown, at the bottom of the page, and within the People Also Ask section.

Additionally, you can use keyword research tools such as Semrush, Google Ads Keyword Planner, or Ahrefs to view data regarding the volume of people searching for specific keywords, related keywords, and the difficulty of ranking for specific keywords.

4. Optimize Meta Titles and Descriptions

The meta title is the title of the webpage that is displayed during a search, while the meta description is the additional information listed below that gives context for what the webpage will include. Optimizing meta titles and descriptions will require additional keyword research, as you will need to place targeted keywords in each to drive your site traffic and ranking.

By optimizing meta descriptions and titles, you increase the likelihood that people will visit your page by providing insight into the context you’re providing. In other words, you are providing them with a sample of information to build their trust in your site.

5. Research Your Competitors

Establish who your competitors are, first and foremost. Similar websites producing similar content that are ranking higher than your website can give you insight into what works and what doesn’t. Pay attention to what keywords they are using, the word count of their articles, and the number of links they are incorporating into their content.

You can even perform an SEO audit of competitors’ websites to compare with your own using some SEO programs such as Surfer SEO. Furthermore, consider performing this type of research for each of your pages and projects. For example, some websites that are ranking for an article similar to yours may not be your direct competitor. However, you should take note of the ways their article’s structure and actionability is working for them.

6. Create High-Quality Content

Think about the most helpful websites you’ve used and keep referring to again and again. It is likely that they have something in common — high-quality content. Not only does great content help to improve your SEO, but it also attracts new customers and retains existing ones.

Quality content needs to be three things actionable, shareable, and accessible. Actionable, meaning it includes links and resources in addition to the content, giving customers the tools to actually implement the information you’re providing.

Additionally, you want the content to be shareable. This can mean it is easy to share via email, social media, or text and includes content that will encourage customers to share the information that is informative, palatable, and insightful.

Finally, your content should be accessible to everyone. Meaning, you should use natural language that is easy to understand for beginners in your field. Moreover, you should consider offering your content for free or through an email subscription in order to make it more accessible to a wider audience.

7. Earn Backlinks

A huge part of improving SEO is developing “authority,” which represents the trustworthiness of the content your website is publishing. Backlinks are an essential part of establishing authority for your website.

Backlinks are the places on the internet where your website is linked. You can earn backlinks by contacting websites and businesses that relate to your business or content, encouraging them to share a link to your website or a specific piece of content on your website.

8. Track Website Analytics

Once you’ve implemented your SEO strategies, you need to watch how effective your changes were by tracking website analytics. This should be set up before changes are implemented in order to compare your website performance prior to improving SEO.

Tools such as Google Analytics or Surfer SEO can help you identify the amount of traffic each page is receiving as well as important information about demographics and keyword effectiveness. Some tools will even provide you with suggestions for improving your keyword rankings and optimizing your website’s content.

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