Search engine optimization is difficult for any company, but as a startup, you face a unique set of challenges. Before those restricted finances run out, you need to make an impact quickly, get things going, and start gaining traction. This is probably why a lot of startups try to cut corners with SEO in the hopes of speeding up their way to search ranking glory.
Here are a few examples of Google’s recent penalties for low-quality websites.
In this tutorial, I’ll show you how businesses may approach SEO to obtain fast, long-lasting results — and then how to automate your search strategy.
Here’s a quick rundown of what we’ll be covering in this guide:
- What distinguishes startup SEO from traditional SEO?
- What are the requirements of search engines?
- What constitutes excellent SEO content?
- Automating your startup’s search engine optimization strategy
What distinguishes startup SEO from traditional SEO?
There is nothing (other than the scale of the challenge). Google doesn’t care if you’re a startup, a large financial institution, or a little online retailer; all it cares about is linking consumers to the most relevant content for each search query. The search engine optimization services requirements for a startup are the same as for the world’s most well-known businesses, and search engines want the same things from you as they do from any other type of company.
The size of the issue is what makes a difference for most startups. You may lack the resources of a giant corporation, but your goal is to expand as rapidly as possible and compete with the industry’s greatest brands.
For many businesses, this means conducting enterprise SEO on a small business budget, which entails some trade-offs. The difficulty is that when it comes to search engine optimization, Google does not accept compromises, so you must nail the fundamentals. The good news is that the sooner you get things right, the sooner you’ll be able to develop a self-sustaining SEO plan that won’t cost you money down the road.
What are the requirements of search engines?
As previously stated, Google is unconcerned about the type of business you run or your marketing goals. When it comes to SEO, search engines have their agenda, and it all boils down to assigning high-ranking positions to pages that give the following:
- Accessibility: Search engines must be able to view your pages before they can rank them.
- Quality content writing is defined as relevant, unique, and valuable content that offers users the answers they seek when they type in a query.
- Excellent user experience (UX): Your website is an extension of the search experience, and Google expects your sites to provide excellent UX.
- Engagement: Great UX and quality content should keep consumers on your site and engaged with your material, which is exactly what search engines want to see.
- Optimizing: All of the optimization essentials that make sites easier to understand for search engines and users.
- Essentially, you must develop exceptional content and experiences while covering the technical optimisation basics – this is what search engines and users are looking for.
How do search engines evaluate these factors?
The issue with terms like “excellent content” and “amazing UX” is that they are completely imprecise.
The top three Google ranking variables, according to Andrey Lipattsev, a Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google, are content, links, and RankBrain.
Keywords
The use of keywords to match relevant material to queries has been one of the most significant enhancements to Google’s algorithm throughout the years. The days of simply matching search phrases to keywords on your page are over, and Google’s machine learning algorithms can match the topical relevance of your material to the contextual meaning behind user searches.
Links
Even though Google’s core algorithm includes hundreds of ranking variables, links remain one of the top three. Content that receives a lot of links from reputable sources is likely to be interesting and high-quality, and it’s the quality of the links you get that matters, not the quantity.
UX signals Google employs a combination of UX signals to determine how well your pages’ experience is. This includes things like page load times, mobile-friendliness, safe encryption, content positioning, and site navigation.
Signals of engagement
You can get an indication of how engaging your content is by looking at bounce rates, average time on page, and the number of pages visited per session – and Google can do the same. If a user visits your site, then rapidly returns to the search results page and clicks on another listing (a practice known as “pogo-sticking”), it indicates that you haven’t delivered what they’re looking for.
Location
The importance of geography in your Search engine optimization strategy is determined by the nature of your startup. Airbnb wants to appear in local results, and companies like Uber, Skyscanner, and Deliveroo also rely on location data to interact with new and returning consumers.
Website development should be SEO-friendly for your startup
Although it may be tempting to slap together a website and sign up with the cheapest hosting service you can find, you will be restricting your growth opportunities. As we’ve already discussed in this guide, user experience and engagement factors are critical components of your search marketing strategy, which means you’ll need an SEO-friendly website.
There are five main areas to consider:
1st: Hosting
Remember that your aim as a business is to develop as quickly and sustainably as possible, and selecting the wrong hosting bundle is the worst way to get started. Page loading times – which will be a direct ranking factor in July 2018 – are heavily influenced by the quality of your hosting services.
The bundle you choose will also limit the number of visitors that can access your site and the amount of data that may be moved from your site to them. That is, if your startup outgrows your hosting subscription, users will be unable to access your website.
You should also consider your service provider’s uptime record, the security system they have in place, and what additional performance features are available (e.g. web cache, CDN, etc.)
2nd: Code
Code is another important component in website performance, and it affects everything from how search engines access your website to how quickly your pages load and the mobile experience you can deliver.
Clean, fast code is essential, and you should be aware of this if you’re utilising WordPress themes or other CMS platforms that come with a lot of bloated code.
Create your own templates for new pages and crucial elements if you’re starting from scratch so you don’t have to continually spell out the same code. Also, familiarise yourself with dynamic web pages so you can alter features like your website’s header in one place rather than having to make the same changes manually across every page.
#3: Style
While search engines cannot see your website’s visual design, they can interpret the navigational structure and fundamental layout of your pages if they are properly marked up. You should also consider the UX signals we discussed before, as these have a direct impact on your engagement signals.
User experience is now solely a direct ranking consideration for mobile pages, but that doesn’t imply UX and engagement signals won’t have an impact on your desktop ranking. You’re not providing Google much incentive to promote your pages to users on any device if your bounce rates are sky high and your loading times are slow.
#4: Content
Content is why people use search engines in the first place, and your ability to provide it will determine the success of your SEO campaign. In the following section of this article, I’ll go through this in further depth.
#5: Optimisation of the landing page
We probably don’t need to go into too much detail here because on-page optimization receives a lot of attention. It’s critical that you get this perfect for every page you publish, but there are plenty of tips on the subject, and once you’ve mastered it, it’ll be the easiest element of your SEO plan.
Here’s a rundown of what you’ll need to know:
Make your page URL descriptive, understandable, and relevant to your main keyword. Most of the time, this will be the same as your page title, minus any stop words, and formatted as https://jkmsoftsolutions.com
.Page titles: This is the title that displays in search results as the blue link text — make it descriptive, readable, and incorporate your main keyword when applicable.
A page title highlighted in red as it displays in Google Search.
Headings: Make sure your page’s content is divided into logical sections and separated by appropriate heading tags (h1, h2, h3, etc.)
Make the content one-of-a-kind, valuable, and focused on a single topic.
Keywords: Use synonyms, variations, and closely related terms in the main body of your text to prevent keyword stuffing, and include keywords in your page title and headings where applicable.
Make use of images: Use relevant images to break up long blocks of text and optimise them for search (compress files sizes, include subject and keyword in alt-description, etc.)
Internal links: Include links to any relevant pages on your website in the main body of the article.
Mobile optimization: Pages that are well-optimized for mobile search perform higher.
Structured data: By labelling areas of your page as articles, reviews, addresses, and so on, you may give search engines structured information about your content at the code level.
