SEO tips for startups: Get it right from the start

SEO, or search engine optimisation, is a massive part of modern marketing. Basically, SEO is the process of improving your website to make it more likely to show up when people use search engines like Google. For example, if you run a local bakery and have great SEO, your business website would be the first result when someone searches for “best local bakery”.

This article will provide a few SEO tips for startups, so you can make your new business more visible to potential customers. We’ll cover SEO tactics such as:

• Have an SEO strategy
• Keyword research
• Internal linking
• Stay up to date

If you’re running a startup, you’ve likely got some experience writing a business plan or a financial plan. It’s also a good idea to put together an SEO plan. SEO plans are useful for the same reasons that all plans are: it allows you to keep track of all the different steps involved in your project, and helps with tracking your progress.

The key thing with an SEO plan is to have the next step ready in case the first thing you try doesn’t work. For instance, say you perform some keyword research and start targeting those keywords in your content. If that doesn’t have enough of an impact, check your SEO plan for the next step. It’s important to note that SEO isn’t an overnight fix, and you should be patient when watching progress before changing your approach, as this could lead to inconsistency.

Keyword research is the best way of finding out what your target audience searches for when they look for businesses and products like yours. There’s a ton of ways you can find out about how to do keyword research, but here are the basic steps:

These topics will all be related to your business. For instance, if you run a business that sells athletic wear, you might list topics like ‘running shoes’ or ‘rugby shorts’. Try to think of topics that your target audience will be interested in as well as the products you sell.

Next, you want to brainstorm a few keywords that fit into your topics. Keywords are the words and phrases that people actually type into their search engines when looking for your business. If we use our athletic wear example, these keywords might be ‘comfortable football boots’ or ‘sportswear shops near me’.

An important part of keyword research is using SEO tools like Google Analytics or Semrush. These tools help check that you’re on the right track with your keyword research. 

You can use SEO tools to find out the keywords people have used in the past to find your website. If you know these, you can start thinking of similar keywords to use, which will help drive more visitors to your website. Very new startups might not have many past keywords, but SEO tools can still perform analysis and provide data that’s super useful for startups to use.

Once your research is complete, you can start using the keywords on your website. It’s good to make keywords the focus of your content or your website heading and category pages, but don’t overuse them. Google actually ranks websites that overuse keywords lower than websites that use them appropriately.

Internal linking is a good SEO practice for startups because it’s very easy to do. When you create your business website, the site will likely have multiple pages. Internal linking means including hyperlinks to and from different pages of your website. 

The link in the paragraph above goes to another Countingup article on this website. It’s an example of an internal link. Other internal links are things like navigation menus that lead to different sections of website. 

Internal links are good for SEO because of how search engine technology works. When Google ranks websites for its results page, the search engine will follow links on your website (and other sites) to see where they lead. If a page has many links connecting to it, Google will see it as having high-value content and rank that page highly on its results.

One of the best SEO tips for startups is to keep an ear to the ground. Search engines are constantly updating the software and technology that they use so that people using the search engines can find relevant content faster and easier. So what was a great SEO tactic yesterday might not do anything tomorrow.

These constant developments mean that having good SEO means updating your website regularly. It’s vital that startup owners keep up to date with the latest technology trends, as they might have a huge impact on your SEO tactics. 

Most search engine updates recently have a lot to do with the user experience. For instance, Google’s search engine software now avoids websites with a lot of popup content, as visitors can find these annoying. ‘Keyword stuffing’, the practice of overusing a keyword to trick a search engine into thinking a page is very relevant, is also fairly useless due to Google’s updates.

Good SEO means more visitors to your website, which means more sales and more income. Keep in mind that more income means you might need to put more time into your financial management. 

Countingup is the two in one business current account with built-in accounting software that allows you to manage all your financial data in one place. With features like automatic expense categorisation, invoicing on the go, receipt capture tools, tax estimates, and cash flow insights, you can confidently keep on top of your business finances wherever you are. 

You can also share your bookkeeping with your accountant instantly without worrying about duplication errors, data lags or inaccuracies. Seamless, simple, and straightforward! 

Find out more here.