As a new startup, it’s all too easy to fall into the default mindset of speed. New startups need quick wins, and these quick wins are what help them survive.
An immediate lack of results is often pushed to the wayside.
While the need for instant gratification is not inherently a bad thing, in relation to SEO and marketing, the disconnect between initiating the campaign and the results can often be a sticking point for many startups.
But what about when you need to shift some more long-term goals, when you need to think about sustainability and supporting your business through the early days and on to what lies ahead?
You need to consider building a scalable business that can withstand the test of time and move forward as you grow. This will take your company from strength to strength.
While not offering instant gratification, SEO for startups has been a valuable market. When implemented correctly, SEO can drip through the results that you need and build longevity and sustainability in ways that other marketing can’t do.
So, what do startups need in terms of SEO, and how can you use SEO to effectively boost your business now and in the future?
Set SMART Goals
Before you do anything else about SEO, you must set clear goals and objectives. These goals need to align with your broader business and help you build a customer base for your sector. This might involve driving sales for any commerce brand or building a customer base for a SaaS startup.
Setting SEO objectives means you need clear, measurable goals, such as SMART goals.
SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals. 
These goals can include increasing your email subscriber list, sales, and organic traffic by a specific percentage in a set timeframe, for example, or anything else that will provide real value you can track.
Google Analytics, Google Search Console, SEM Rush, Ahrefs, and Moz can all be valuable tools for helping with keyword research, tracking, search engine rankings, and competitors.
Research Keywords
Now you have your SEO goals, you need to look at your keyword research.
Your keywords need to be relevant to the products or services you offer and the type of searches people will make on Google to find your business.
You can do this by targeting popular keywords and phrases related to what you do, or you can ask customers what they search to find your business or what they associate with your company to help you uncover obscure keywords that can help support your SEO, as well as the more common ones.
When researching keywords, you need to consider search volume and difficulty. This means how many people are searching for a keyword and how hard it is to rank for it.
While targeting highly searched keywords might seem more effective, chances are you’ve already got established competition, and it will be much harder to rank for as opposed to keywords that may have lower search volumes. While lower-difficulty search words won’t bring as many visitors, they can form a valuable base for your campaign.
You also need to understand the intent of the search that people are making. Are they looking to make a purchase, or are they looking for information? This will help you prioritize keywords that match the intention of the search.
Optimized Content
You need to focus on creating valuable content. This could be in-depth guides, case studies, or expert interviews that provide unique insights and solutions to your audience’s problems.
You must also ensure this content is written for humans, not algorithms. It should be valuable and informative, and utilize short paragraphs, headings, and bullet points.
Once you have this natural content, you can work on inserting your keywords, following SEO best practices.
When creating your content, it’s also a good idea to look at the rules and requirements regarding AI SEO. AI SEO is sites such as ChatGPT and Claude. These sites are becoming just as popular as traditional search engines, as people want to find answers and information to their queries.
Ensuring that your content is valuable enough to be featured in these results and Google’s AI overview, which now appears throughout search engine results for all queries, is vital for SEO success.
Let’s take Google’s AI overview. This feature provides a quick answer to a user’s query at the top of the search results.
This brings your content directly to the eyes of the people who need to see it and are searching for it by these means. Google’s AI overview, for example, prominently features at the top of any search results and sometimes throughout results. This means that before the user sees anything else, they will see your content in the AI result.
Backlinks
The idea itself seems really simple, doesn’t it?
However, no one wants to link to content that isn’t valuable, informative, or comes off as spammy.
You need Google, the audience, and other websites to trust and value your content; this is how you’ll gain high-quality backlinks.
To do this, you need to build relationships within your industry. You also need to create content that others in your niche are naturally linking to and want to share with their own audience.
This can involve collaborating on projects such as podcasts or webinars, full stuff, or optimizing content to strengthen your connections within your industry.
Another effective way to get people to link to your content is to offer something for free that other companies’ audiences can use, too. Look for what isn’t being offered elsewhere and implement free tools or resources that people will want to share and talk about.
In a nutshell, you want to create shareable content, which is key to making people want to help you and share your content.
Another angle you can use is tools to identify websites with broken links to pages or outdated content and offer them an alternative via links to more relevant content or resources on your site. These tools easily remove a dead link and allow you to provide a new way to link out to valuable content.
