It’s been a big week in tech! Importance of Search Engine optimization of course, which is unrestrained and leaves a lot of startups to question their marketing strategy in a “Do-not-track” world. Furthermore, there are Some Recent Developments in Google Search Engine policy that get us pumped for the future.
I Read a long blog article on Startup SEO – Lonely, Frustrating and Sometimes, Embarrassing.. but It doesn’t have, they did great Job in formulating startup problem in attempting SEO.
As startups build the product products by finding pity gaps in the market (which is not easy) trying to solves the problem (with the little evidence they have) and then expect to go viral with their products/services which is the biggest mistake it.
A key phrase of Startups Problem that is explain in this article is
- We don’t believe in marketing our products. We firmly believe in WoM” #startupmistake
- Limited time, limited budget
Conclusion: We have learnt that SEO requires resources, time, and patience and as you can guess those three items aren’t found in many startups.
For Internet consumer companies as PRODUCT development cycles are shorter, MARKETING costs are lower due to a variety of broadly-available low-cost online distribution channels like Facebook, Twitter but startups also tends to have SEO strategy or inbound marketing strategy as nice-to-haves at best, or snake oil at worst because ranking in search engine is not optional but its critical for the business.
And Google dominates the search-engine space with 70 percent market share, so optimizing your site to land a good ranking in Google search results is vital.
As a startups you need to invest your substantial time in order to learn for SEO because one of the most common issues I’ve run into with startup SEO is that you often have to create a new lexicon AND convince people to start searching that way. When you’ve invented an entirely new product that people have never thought of before, chances are there is no search volume for your top keywords. You have to pull in a mix of less-than-perfect long tail keywords just so people can find the site.
Google just posted a new resource on its developer blog intended to help startups with the basics of search engine optimization (SEO).
In order to optimize your website for search engine, the tips range from simple, such as setting up a Google Webmaster tools account
Again if have read a lot on SEO and wants some real action and ready to spend something on learning then here it is ACTION VIDEO FOR STARTUP SEO and since it paid, so you will found better presentation as why you want to have this video.
Down the line, I’ve had the opportunity to work with startups during my career, and I have helped several startups with digital marketing strategy. Running a startups and working in a startups is most challenging & happening and I always would like to work with startups
As a brand new company with a new product or service, with no brand recognition and no customers, startups are in an incredibly challenging position, to say the least.
Obviously in this blog a lot of traffic is coming but traffic is coming from referrals, setting up the SEO is the most promising part for any website, Fiercely curious. Passionate about learning So a lot on Startup’s SEO and these can be summed up
Why SEO for startups is different than big setup companies to rank well
Essentially every business on the Internet from multi-billion dollar giants like Bank of America down to a one-man software business is dependent on SEO, because Google has become the primary navigation tool for the Internet.
· Limited budgets : Startups cannot devote huge amounts to advertising, branding campaigns, or link acquisition. (Paying for links will theoretically draw the wrath of Google to you. In practice, once you’re above a certain size, you’re immune. If you’re reading this article, you do not have immunity
· Low domain strength / trust: Google tends to trust older domains, domains with lots of links, and domains with lots of older links. All of these are signals of what one might call trust: the longer you’ve been on the Internet and the more people who asserted your quality by linking to you, the less likely you are to be a useless spammer. However, if you just registered your domain last Tuesday, Google has a priori no reason to trust you over the other billion pages on the Internet.
· Cultural aversion to SEO: There is a pernicious myth among startups that SEO is a black art aimed at perverting the purity of the search results. This is partially because search engine spam is indeed a problem and partially because Google is very good at influencing the culture of technically adept people, and it is in Google’s best interest to make people think that their algorithms are the authoritative voice of God.
Few Things to Remember
“…it can take a bit of time for search engines to catch up with your content, and to learn to treat it appropriately. It’s one thing to have a fantastic website, but search engines generally need a bit more to be able to confirm that, and to rank your site – your content – appropriately.”
Link Richness: SEO is, at competitive levels, mostly about link acquisition. It is very difficult to get a link without paying for it in many sectors of the information economy.
A Summary of SEO for Startups (reference from Google presentation & lot more research)
1. Objective :
- Provide the basics in an efficient manner
- Rest assured that you’re not doing something totally wrong related to Search
- Provide pointers for more information
2. Select www or non-www
Then 301 accordingly to consolidate indexing signals.
3. Verify ownership in Webmaster
- Enable email forwarding to receive critical messages from Google (e.g. hacked, malware, crawling issues)
- “Using Webmaster Tools like an SEO“
4. Domain background check
Previously a spammy domain? Submit a reconsideration request through Webmaster Tools
- “Keywords” listed in Webmaster Tools
- Indexed with a [site:foo.com] search
- Rank when searching for domain name
Webmaster Guidelines
Penalties and reconsideration requests
5. Webmaster Tools: Fetch as Googlebot
Crawl then to index
- Utility: Does our site design meet the needs of each persona?
- Navigation: If searcher lands on child page…
- Can they figure out where they are?
- Can they easily navigate to where they want to be?
- Focused: Does each page contain one logical topic obvious to visitors
7. Define your conversion
I want my <group foo> visitors to:
- Sign up for the newsletter
- Contact our bizdev lead
- Buy our product
- Try our product
- Share our service
Make a relevant conversion possible on every page — don’t force users to make extra clicks.
8. Be smart about your copy
Include relevant keywords naturally in your text.
- Include query terms normal people would use to find your product/business (e.g., “running shoes,” not “athletic footwear”)
- Research common terms through Adwords keywords tool
- Consider tag clouds and misspellings as fairly played out
- Answer your visitors’/personas’ questions
- Is the product reputable? Show reviews, let users review.
- What if it doesn’t work? Explain customer satisfaction policy.
9. Every page should include
- Unique topic
- Unique title (displays in search results)
- Unique meta description for the snippet
- For non-dynamic sites: keywords in the filename, lowercase and hyphen separated
- Descriptive anchor text for every link
10. Anchor text: Room for improvement
For more information on our product specifications, click here.
11. For more information, please read our product specifications.
12. Sitelinks : More info on sitelinks http://goo.gl/OM2Ji
13. Potential pitfalls
- Hiring a rogue or shady SEO (if they guarantee anything, that’s bad news)
- Participating in link schemes or buying links to pass PageRank
- Focusing more on site fanciness than having indexable/searchable text
14. Speed
Akamai study finds two seconds as customer “acceptability” threshold for e-commerce sites. Google aims for under a half-second
More info on performance and SEO http://goo.gl/SnIJt
15. Ranking
- Check how you rank for your company name. (Hopefully #1 and with sitelinks.)
- Understand how you rank for other terms through Webmaster Tools’ Search Queries (again, video at http://goo.gl/VM31L)
- Get involved.
- No one searches for your new kind of product or service? Perhaps prioritize finding a potential audience/community on existing forums, blogs, or social media sites.
To rank well, provide an awesome product or service, then attract buzz: natural links, +1s, likes, follows, shares…
16. Social media marketing
You likely have limited resources.
- Think holistically: Create an identity on key sites, participate, connect users to entry point of conversion
- Focus your energy where your audience hangs out
- Play to your authentic strengths
- CEO likes to tweet
- Salesperson enjoys Facebook
- Developer already on Google+, Stack Overflow
Conclusion :
Even with great marketing and terrific advertising, valuable conversion still happens on your site.
Stay focused and make sure you’re ready!
