As a startup owner, you cannot afford to miss out on building an online presence. When it’s about establishing an online presence, SEO for startups is the crux of everything. Before deep diving into the question, let us ask you what is the most happening event you have witnessed since the COVID-19 outbreak? What would your answer be? The answer is simple: first COVID itself, and second, the success stories of billion-dollar startups from different domains.

Startups are not new to this world, but still, the growth and change that they have shown recently are astonishing just because of a small change. The change that Corona enforced on all of us. The shift in the digital era. The most prominent cause for these success stories is the role of digital platforms and startups’ multidimensional presence across these platforms. 

When we talk about digital presence, the core of all this is your website and performance over different search engines. It is the core because the majority of your traffic comes from here. So, it becomes immensely crucial for founders and CEOs of startups to utilize this opportunity and invest in strategies for the best SEO optimization. In simple words, SEO is the process of making your website, its content, and your overall online presence more relevant and more impactful to the users so that browsers give you a cakewalk to rank higher over search queries.

SEO tips for startups

There are a lot of things that you can do to improve your SEO performance. We have listed a few SEO tips for startups that a founder must conquer to build a better online presence.

• Buyer persona research for startups
• Keyword research and planning for startups
• Off Page SEO optimization
• Local SEO for Startup
• Creating content for startups

Setting up a perfect buyer persona for Startups

Creating a well-narrowed buyer persona is one of the most tedious tasks. Most startup owners need help to set up the correct buyer persona, but if you do that, then half the battle is conquered. It provides a strong foundation in SEO for Startups. Buyer persona helps us to know our potential customers, like what they are looking for, which platforms they generally surf, what their expectations are from a particular service, and most importantly, how you can establish contact with them. Once you are done with this, you can open a Word file and list all this stuff. 

How to perform customer research for startups ?

Here are some SEO tips for Startups that can help you to get through:

1. Before understanding your potential customers, you must be very clear about your startup’s domain in which sector you belong, like FMCG, Healthcare, service, etc, whether it is international, national, B2B, or D2C. Suppose you are the founder of a face wash product company; chances are very high that females, especially working-class females from the age group 20 to 45, will be your most segmented audience. 
2. After getting this brief idea, you can jump to the next step of your research, called Competitor Analysis. It can be the most intriguing part because you have to analyze your potential competitors. It will help you to understand what things they are using to create their funnels; it will also help you to get a better understanding of how your customers are interacting.
3. You can perform website audits to become more clear about your competition strategy and hence can create more tailored service for your customers that would be more engaging.
4. Another way you can form a better buyer persona is by going through the latest market research reports, as they can provide you with the waves of customer demands and their solutions present in the market.

Startups Keyword research and optimization

Keyword research is the most significant part of practicing a successful SEO for Startups.

Hammering the right audience is the only way you survive the digital competition, and keyword research is the only way you can do it. As a startup founder, try to find the search queries of your targeted audience. Think of their natural behavior and how they might be using the internet to get to the services or products you are offering. 

How to perform keyword research and planning for startups ?

The relevant SEO tips for keyword research and planning for startups are as follows:

1. Research the keyword. You can think of what keyword your potential customers use on the internet. Another way to get keyword ideas is by analyzing Google itself. For this, you need to see these sections on Google SERP:

• Google autocomplete feature
• Related searches option
• People also ask for a section

For example, you have a cosmetic startup. Suppose you type in the keyword “best face wash for dry skin in the USA”, you will see these autocomplete suggestions by Google:

• which face wash is best for dry skin
• which type of face wash is best for dry skin
• World’s best face wash for dry skin
• Which face wash to use for dry skin

Further on the SERP, you will see these related search options:

• the best face wash for dry skin dermatologist recommended
• the best face wash for dry skin female
• 5 best cleansers for dry skin
• the best face wash for dry skin in the USA 
• best face wash for dry skin for teenage girl 
• best face wash for dry skin females in the USA
• best face wash for dry skin in winter 
• cerave face wash for dry skin

These are some other queries that a female with dry skin is searching on the internet. You can consider including these keywords in your website content marketing. Plus, through this way, you will also get an idea of the skin problems of your targeted audience. 

2. Once you are done with the keyword research part, analyze the performance of these keywords for the filtration process. There are many keywords related to a particular field. However, all are not equally important and you need to filter out the best-performing keywords for your website. But how will you do that? 

There are various keyword research tools that will help you in this process. These include,

• Google keyword planner
• Semrush
• Ubersuggest
• Ahrefs

Let’s continue with our skincare startup example. Let’s say you search the metric of the keyword “best face wash for dry skin”, here are the findings:

Search volume: 6600

SEO difficulty: 71

Paid difficulty: 100

Cost Per Click or CPC: $2.26

Since the keyword difficulty of this search term is quite high, that is 71, it is not recommended to use it. Keyword research and planning tools such as Ubersuggest will also provide you with other related keyword ideas that you can use on your website:

3. Further, it is advisable to use the long tail keyword instead of the short tail keyword. It is because long tail keywords are more specific and attract better leads for your startup.
4. Regularly work on your keyword research and planning part. This is because keywords may change with trends and times. Therefore, you must be aware of these changes and make the required updates accordingly. 

For example, in the above skincare startup example, the beauty product purchase trends will change with the seasons. 

Off-Page SEO for Startup

While you focus on optimizing your website content and making technical changes when and where necessary, don’t forget that just like in traditional marketing where you require word-of-mouth advertising, the same is the case with digital marketing as well. Off-page SEO is the process of optimizing your online presence outside your startup website. It is similar to getting votes for your startup from another relevant industry expert. Let’s see how we can do Off-page SEO for our startup.

How to do off-page SEO for our startup ?

The relevant SEO tips for startups are as follows:

Link Building

One of the most common things on the internet is a link. Links dictate the movement from one page to another on the internet. Link Building is essential for your startup website too. Creating backlinks is one of the most important techniques for a successful SEO for a startup. When you get more quality backlinks, it is like a signal to the google algorithm that your website has trustworthy content. Therefore, when someone searches for your targeted keyword, google gives preference to your website in ranking. 

You must have noticed that we have used the prefix “quality” before backlinks. It is done deliberately because when it comes to acquiring backlinks, quality always wins over quantity. Now how will you define “quality”? 

A backlink is called of quality importance when,

• It comes from a high-domain authority website
• The anchor text contains your targeted keyword
• The website is relevant to yours.

Let’s see how we can get quality backlinks for the startup website:

• Create shareable content and establish your credibility in your industry. This way, if your content is legitimate, people will link back to your website for references.
• Write guest posts on other relevant websites. Research well and pick those websites that have a high domain authority.
• Find broken links on other relevant websites and submit your content for the replacement.

Social Media Optimisation for Startup

Social media channels are important for your startup marketing. Not just that, these social links will also act as a credibility signal to Google’s search algorithm. Therefore, choose the right platform for your marketing, the one where your customers are most active. Then the next step is to fully optimize your social media profile and create content strategies.

Local SEO for Startups

If your startup has a physical location or serves a specific geographic area, you cannot afford to miss out on the importance of local SEO. Local SEO is particularly important for startups such as:

Local SEO for startups will help you rank higher and get more leads and sales. Let’s see some of the best local SEO strategies that you can use in your startup.

How to do local SEO for startups ?

The relevant local SEO tips for startups are as follows:

1. Create your Google My Business or GBM profile. Fully optimize your startup profile by adding all the required details such as phone number, working hours, address, company description, and a few nice pictures. 
2. List your startup in other online directories such as Yellow Pages, Apple Maps, bing, etc. To find industry-relevant online directories, use this syntax while researching:

[your industry] + local directory in +[your preferred location]

3. Focus on local keywords and phrases. This includes location-specific keywords or near-me or close-by keywords. A few examples are as follows:

• [Your startup niche] in [your location]
• [your startup niche] near me

4. Create local content that caters to the interest of the local audience. Further, you can participate in local communities and events for better networking.

Content Creation for Startup

Content creation is important for startups to market their service or product, increase brand value, and get better leads and sales. It is one of the most cost-effective ways of marketing that has a high return on investment. Let’s see how we can create SEO-plus user-friendly content for startups.

How to create quality content for startups ?

The relevant content creation tips for startups are as follows:

1. Have a clear idea of what you want to achieve from content marketing. Ask yourself: Do you want more brand awareness, leads, or sales? 
2. Create different content formats such as blog posts, videos, infographics, podcasts, and social media content.
3. Add your targeted keywords naturally in your website content else the Google algorithm will count your practice as keyword stuffing and derank your website.
4. Be authentic and transparent in your content. You must connect with your customers through your content.

SEO for startups is a wide topic as it is an overall strategy checklist for all industries. If you want more specific details related to your industry, check out our other blogs.