As a budding entrepreneur and startup focused on building and growing their company, you may not have given much thought to keywords and online optimization just yet. You may have built a professional and engaging website without thinking about SEO measures to implement, or you may be planning some fun and engaging social media posts without thinking about how you can incorporate key search terms.
Search Engine Optimization can seem a lot to handle at the very beginning, but it’s also an essential marketing feature that you should be looking to implement sooner rather than later. So if you’re an entrepreneur launching a startup, now is the time to think about good SEO practices and how to start off in the right way so that your optimization can carry you through to success.
SEO, like anything else in your new business, will require planning and strategy. Having a plan in place for your SEO, with goals in mind, means that you’ll know what you’re looking to achieve with your Search Engine Optimization. This will help you to know what you need to do in order to achieve those SEO goals, so planning out a strategy is key.
Building your first business site can be a long process, one that’s important not to rush, but it’s a crucial step in solidifying your brand. There are many ways you can incorporate SEO into your website, so it makes sense to prepare for this as you’re building your new site rather than having to return to it later.
A good foundation for SEO on your website can include:
Using keywords or keyphrases in your product descriptions Using keywords or keyphrases in your image names Creating an initial blog or news posts which introduce your product and include keyphrases
Also, in terms of your website, making sure that it’s mobile-friendly from the get-go is key. As most shopping and browsing is done on mobile devices or devices other than desktop computers these days, it’s important to make your website as mobile user-friendly as possible. Plus, it is one of Google’s key ranking factors.
Run a check on your website that it’s loading correctly on mobile devices as well as desktop, including banners and tabs displaying correctly. Or, you may want to consider creating a separate mobile site along with a desktop site.
While there are many key SEO methods you can achieve for free, SEO is a worthwhile investment when you want it to be done professionally and extensively. Therefore, including SEO into your marketing budget is a must, such as needing professional services from Google My Business experts or needing to pay for paid advertisements to push keywords and topics.
This should usually be a part of any startup strategy outside of SEO, but it’s also a fundamental part of your SEO marketing. Make time for competitor research and understand how your competitors are incorporating their own SEO, how well in the rankings they are placed (and why), and what they are doing differently to you that’s securing their success.
Data is going to be extremely useful when it comes to what’s working and what isn’t in regard to your SEO. However, as a busy startup, you may forget to check back in with your data and think that your SEO is going to be running successfully in the background.
It may take a little trial and error to get your SEO how you want it to be, but as long as you’re checking in with the data from the get-go, you can plan for a routine that allows you to learn about your consumers and SEO.
You might want to produce as much content as possible, as quickly as possible, as a new business to try and promote good SEO, but this isn’t the best way to do it. Instead, take your time to plan out high-quality content, as this is what search engines (and consumers) will react more positively to.
Content should always be relevant and engaging rather than just an excuse to implement an overkill of keywords. It’s much better to spend longer planning out the right pieces of content than rush your posts.
Just as with anything else in your business, SEO needs to be constantly reviewed and evolved, too. Your SEO efforts should move with the times and grow alongside your business, which means keeping on top of your SEO strategy. Regularly updating it will be vital.
Having a team or person solely responsible for SEO and the marketing side of things is a good way to ensure that nothing is missing or nothing slips through the net.
These eight tips are a great SEO foundation to build upon. If you’re a very small team or business, you can outsource SEO help, especially if you feel as though your internal team can’t commit the right amount of time.
