SEO for Startup Businesses

Having the 14th largest economy in the world and ranking 9th for best countries to start a business in 2020, Australia is an economic powerhouse with a rapidly growing startup community. Despite the pandemic, Australian startups hit new heights in terms of investment for the first half of 2020. This popularity of startups gives rise to a particular approach to SEO, SEO for Startups.

SEO for startup businesses isn’t different from organic SEO in terms of which ranking factors it optimises to improve ranking in SERP(search engine results pages) and drive more traffic into websites. Instead, it’s an approach of SEO that satisfies the unique needs of startup businesses.

Although startups vary a lot in terms of scale and funding, they’re all young and need to establish their reputations quickly so they usually go for enterprise-level growth with a startup budget. Given these constraints, some startups opt to cut corners, like buying links from malicious sites and stuffing keywords into their pages, for immediate results. This gets them red-flagged by search engines which sabotages their SEO. To avoid this, you should set realistic expectations and build an SEO strategy that addresses your startup needs. Remember, SEO is a long-term investment and you reap what you sow.

Before starting on SEO for your startup, first, outline the business goals you want SEO to target. When doing this, be realistic. If you’re just starting a website, don’t expect for your pages to rank high in SERP the next week. That’s just likely to make you frustrated. Instead, devote time to strategise. Strategy is key to making sure you achieve the results you want at the shortest time possible and at the lowest cost. 

If you don’t have a website yet like 59% of small Australian businesses, you should carefully select your web hosting service since this can make and break your website in the future. There are plenty of web hosting companies and three kinds of web hosting (shared hosting, virtual private service, and dedicated hosting).

When choosing among them, ask yourself how big your website will be. Also consider security. As a startup, will customers be disclosing private information and credit card details? How about selling products? ECommerce sites have specific needs that are more sales-oriented which certain web hosting companies provide. Then, how much traffic are you expecting? You should consider your level of expertise too and determine who will be designing your website architecture. This helps you decide how much customisation you need. Lastly, do you plan to have a blog? Most websites have one where they produce content. If you plan to do that, then look for web hosting services that are compatible with the blogging platform you’re going to use.

For pages to rank, make them crawlable and make sure they’re all indexed. Also, make your website accessible by optimising your loading speed and making your website mobile-friendly. Additionally, keep navigation simple so that it takes as little effort as possible for potential clients to perform your call to action.

As a startup, investing in content is a great strategy to gain organic traffic. Provide relevant, up-to-date content (blog, videos, podcasts, etc.) and make them linkable and link-worthy. When people like your content, they share it on social media, forums, or even blogs; this goes a long way in building your website’s authority and boosting your ranking in organic search.

While more and more companies come out with blogs, it’s a fact that people prefer to look than to read. So make your blog posts visual! Include great photos, or better yet, engaging infographics and videos that help convey information better than words can. Lastly, no matter how good your article is, it doesn’t help your startup unless it leads to conversion. So make your articles actionable! For example, provide a link to a transactional page that sells a product or service.

When optimising your webpages, make your titles short and click-worthy. Then, match your URL with the title. Also, write compelling meta descriptions that entice click-throughs to help drive traffic into your website. You should also optimise your headers and content by using proper keywords that let you rank and drive traffic in the soonest time possible. To do this, go after long-tail keywords that are specific but have less competition so they are likely to rank better and yield results earlier. 

When optimising your content, don’t forget to build internal links. When your website is new, it will be very difficult to drive traffic into your product pages. Linking these to pillar pages that rank should help drive traffic to these pages increase likelihood of conversion.

Last but not least, use good-quality photos. The competition in SERP is tight, especially with startups going neck and neck to drive traffic into their sites. Every little detail counts, so invest in good photography to encourage click-throughs and make your site appear more professional.

When starting out, it’s difficult to build backlinks. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, you should. But while doing that, take advantage of the comments section and reviews from customers and audiences. These may not boost your ranking directly, but these can boost sales. 68% of millennials say they trust a product and are more likely to purchase it if it has a peer review. Simultaneously, this is a great opportunity to encourage UGC (user-generated content). After all, more than 25% of the searches for the 20 largest brands in the world are linked to UGC. 

As many as 70% of Australian businesses reported having issues with their sites. If you’re looking for SEO services for startups, work with 532m, one of Australia’s pioneers in SEO services and one of Sydney’s leading growth marketing specialists. Get your free Audit from 532m now or fill out the form below for a consultation.