SEO for Startups:
Why You Need to Invest in SEO
Some new business owners think that it is no longer worth investing in SEO for startups. They think that SEO should not be a priority in their marketing mix since social media is easier to set up and can attract and build an audience for their brand just as well. However, SEO, especially for new businesses, goes beyond building an audience and using content to market your business.
So, why do startups need SEO? Read on about the different benefits of SEO for your startup business to find out.
Benefits of SEO for Startups
01
Brings organic traffic to your website
Aside from being free, what makes organic traffic great is they visit your website with an intention in mind. This could be to seek information about your industry, research what you can offer, or purchase your products or hire you for your services. Whatever their intentions may be, they are more likely to convert as a lead or customer for your business.
SEO is the best way to bring organic traffic to your website. It can bring an average of 53 percent of organic visitors to your website. This is more than the combined traffic that social media marketing, pay-per-click advertising, direct URL entries, and other methods attract to a website.
02
Provides long-term results
The biggest drawback of SEO is that it takes time before you can see its results. However, when you have established your ranking and authority for your targeted keywords, your page’s ranking can last as long as you keep up with your content and SEO efforts. And, unlike paid ads, you do not have to pay for every click made on your pages’ links. This makes SEO more sustainable for your business in the long run.
Moreover, once your brand becomes an authority and thought leader in its niche, other websites and brands will look to you for information. This will lead to more websites linking back to your content, which creates a positive feedback loop for increasing your authority and, consequently, search ranking.
03
Provides a cost-effective marketing method
Even if you hire an SEO agency or pay for SEO tools, the cost of implementing search engine optimization remains fixed. It does not increase even when search engines bring more traffic, unlike PPC advertising methods. This makes it one of the more cost-effective methods for bringing visitors to your website and marketing your business online.
Moreover, if you are planning to use both PPC and SEO for startups, optimizing your website can help you reduce your spending on paid channels for marketing your business. Since it can attract traffic to your website, you will not be dependent on paid methods to attract visitors. SEO can also help identify which keywords are working well to improve the results in your pay-per-click advertising campaigns.
04
Builds an audience for your brand online
The use of SEO with content marketing and email marketing will build an audience for your brand. As long as you continue creating quality content relevant to your brand and your audience’s interests, you will have them as an audience for as long as your business is in operation. A portion of your audience is qualified to become your customers and they will have a greater chance to become brand advocates once they convert.
Moreover, once you have built your audience, you can identify their common characteristics and create a profile for your personas. You can use these personas to create engaging content and copy in your articles, social media content, and advertising campaigns.
05
Helps validate your business ideas faster
As a startup, you need to validate your business idea fast to avoid or minimize wasting time and money. This will help you determine problems and test solutions for your business idea and products or services. You can also test the reception of your target market on your brand messaging, customer service engagements, and product or service offerings.
Since SEO can attract relevant visitors to your website, your business can validate its ideas and perform corrective action faster according to the feedback. They can also serve as a test audience for your branding and marketing efforts to figure out how they will respond to it before implementing it at scale to a wider audience.
06
Complements your content marketing strategy
The keyword research process in SEO for startups identifies which topics will attract your target market to your website and gain their attention on social media. It also gives you an idea of the problems they have which helps you in creating content that is relevant to their needs. Either way, your content becomes effective in engaging your audience and in creating an impression on their minds for your brand.
Moreover, SEO for business startups optimizes the user experience of your website visitors. This makes it easier for your visitors to consume your web content and encourages them to browse your other pages. These increase the chances of them responding positively to your call to action and converting to a lead or customer.
07
Helps establish your brand’s reputation and authority
The goal of SEO is to increase the ranking of your pages for their target keywords in the search engine results page. Aside from optimizing for these keywords, another aspect to achieve a better search ranking is through link-building strategies. Link building is a process that involves acquiring links to your domain in relevant and high-authority websites and platforms. These links will not only help with increasing your search ranking but also lead people browsing content on these websites to your page.
Moreover, link building involves creating guest content on websites. This could be in the form of articles or blogs on other websites or other types of content like podcasts and social media guest posts on other platforms. Aside from its benefits for your search ranking and web traffic, these types of content are also great for spreading awareness of your thought leadership and brand to a relevant audience.
08
Gives you access to data on customer behavior
The best tools for SEO startups help you collect and discover data that can uncover the behavior of your website visitors and customers. You can identify the keywords that interest your potential customers by analyzing your website, those of your competitors, and those within your niche. This can help you identify the topics they find interesting and base your content around these for your website and social media.
Aside from content, the keywords that your target market uses also clue you in on which part of the sales funnel your website lacks in terms of content, landing pages, or service pages. For example, you might be doing well in terms of information searches but do not have as much traffic going for your landing pages where you can convert visitors into leads or customers. You can take corrective action for these by fixing the keywords for these pages, creating more relevant content for them, or creating content for specific segments of your market.
What to Keep in Mind When Implementing SEO (for Startups)
The importance of SEO for startups is evident in the benefits it can bring to your business. However, you still need to consider a few things when investing in SEO for your startup. After all, you do not want to spend too much more than you are supposed to nor do you want to hire unqualified services for your startup.
Here are some things for you to keep in mind about applying it for your startup:
With the importance of SEO, you need to consider it before you even get started with building a website for your startup. SEO involves your website’s design and architecture so it is only logical to implement its concepts. This will provide you with the best results and involve the least amount of work since you will get started right.
Moreover, SEO is one of the best ways to attract organic traffic to your website. It allows you to control your costs for marketing your business online without sacrificing any of your business goals. This lets you put back more into your business to grow its other areas.
The best SEO for startups is the one that takes on a holistic approach to the website. It should involve creating unique and valuable content that targets the keywords your audience searches online. The pages that you lead your visitors to should provide a good user experience to increase. And, you should build backlinks to establish your brand’s authority online and spread awareness for your business.
Local SEO for startups is non-negotiable if you have a local market. It gets your business listed on the local pack of the search results for users near you. Moreover, getting your business to appear on local search results will lead to more conversions since people searching for local queries are more likely to have a commercial or transactional intent.
You will encounter issues when optimizing your website for search engines. This is why it is recommended to work with an SEO agency when implementing it for your business. They can provide the best solutions for SEO for startups since they have already encountered these problems when optimizing a website in the past. And, even if they encounter something new, SEO agencies have a team of experts that can figure things out in no time.
Some agencies know that some startups and small businesses need immediate results for their bottom line. This is why some will claim that their services can provide results quick. SEO for startups or any other businesses cannot be done within a short period without violating the guidelines of search engines. Although it may increase your search ranking fast, search engines will catch up eventually to what you are doing and penalize your website for it. Search engines can even disqualify your website from appearing on the search results in the worst-case scenario.
Are You Looking for a Digital Marketing Agency Experienced in SEO for Startups?
The importance of SEO for startups is clear from this article alone. So, it would not be surprising if you are raring to get started by hiring a digital marketing agency that provides SEO for startups and similar businesses. But, before you do so, consider looking at how SEO ties up with your other marketing strategies. This is what our free marketing consultation can provide your startup here at Big Market Solutions.
Contact us today to schedule your free consultation with one of our marketing experts.