Top 10 SEO Tips for Small Businesses and Startups

With digitalization taking the marketplace by storm, it is imminent for start-ups to have a clear-cut strategy to boost their online presence. Studies show that more than 81% people conduct some type of an online search before making a purchase. And in 2021, wherein organic search is the way to go, I cannot think of a better tool to facilitate that than Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

While many believe that effective SEO requires large investments in time, effort, and money, I think that thorough research coupled with a precise strategy can make SEO one of the most effortless investments you can make that guarantees a robust ROI. But I understand that with the plethora of information available to us, implementation of SEO can seem confusing, especially for a business that is just starting out. So, with that in mind, I have compiled a list of 10 fool-proof tips for your startup that will accelerate your process of SEO. Here’s how it goes:

Define your SEO strategy-

The first SEO tip for any startup looking to deep dive into SEO is to curate a clear strategy. Your strategy will help you define what you want your website to do for you so you’ll know where to start and how to proceed. Make use of free tools-

It is a common myth that in order to deploy effective SEO, you need to invest oodles of money on fancy analytics tools. Entrepreneurs often ignore free tools that are readily available to them. That is absolutely unnecessary. Take my word for it. My 2ndSEO tip for startups would be to look into the wide variety of tools such as Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tool, Backlinko, Yoast, and much more that will help you increase the effectiveness of your SEO tremendously for no added costs. Minimize load speed-

If I have learned one thing from my experience in this field, it is that no matter how creative or attractive your site it, if it takes a lot of time to load, you will most likely lose plenty of potential customers and with that, your SEO rankings. With that in mind, my 3rd SEO tip for startups would be to keep all your image sizes under 100 KB and use an optimized theme, an SSD hosting server, and CDN plugins so that you have you have no trouble with your site’s loading speed.
Ensure that your site is mobile friendly-

Nowadays, we have an all-in-one wonderfully packaged handy device with which you can perform numerous functions at a click. Research shows that in February 2021, more than 54% of global web searches were conducted through mobile phones. As a start-up, that’s not a market that you want to lose out on. So, my 4th SEO tip for start-ups would be to invest in a UI that is mobile friendly and watch your traffic go through the roof! Conduct keyword research-

Using relevant keywords is probably one of the best (and easiest) SEO tip for your startup. I highly recommend spending the early days in your startup looking into commercial and niche keywords that can be incorporated to accelerate lead generation Build your authority with backlinks-

Backlinks are a great way to establish trust and authority amongst your consumers. My 6th tip for SEO, especially for startups is to generate plenty of backlinks from good quality websites which will assure Google that your site provides trustworthy content and will inevitably boost your rankings. Incorporate more infographics-

It is an open secret vetted by industry experts that infographics and other media content can effectively double website traffic and this is simply because visual data is easier to process for a consumer than reading chunks of content. So, my 7th SEO tip for start-ups would be the more infographics you have on your page, the more likely you are to climb SEO ranks. Create content that supplements your product-

My 8th SEO tip for start-ups is to create supplementary content for your product. By this, I mean lots and lots of canonical content. Essentially, canonical content is a series of posts build upon one another that explain how your product can be helpful to your potential customers. What this does for a start-up is that is establishes you as the expert in your field. And who doesn’t want to buy from the expert? Be wary of backhat SEO techniques-

Now that we are towards the end of our list, I would like to give my 9thSEO tip for startups as a warning towards backhat SEO techniques that can end up damaging your SEO strategy adversely. Backhat SEO methods are techniques of implementing SEO in a way that is against Google’s rules for which they could potentially penalize or even remove your website from the search engine. Publish high-quality content-

Good quality, organic content is at the heart of every SEO strategy. No matter how much you dress up your content with SEO tools and techniques, if your content doesn’t deliver results to your end-customers, it will be noticed by the SERPs and will most certainly lose its rank. My last and final SEO tip for start-ups is therefore, to maintain the quality of content that is aligned with the values of your start-up to really boost your rankings. Hope this list helps you and creating a roadmap for your SEO endeavours. I will cover a few more SEO tips and tricks like these in my upcoming blogs. Meanwhile, feel free to reach out to us if you have any queries.