SEO remains a powerful marketing and promotion tactic that you can utilize to grow your startup in 2023 and beyond. However, understanding which techniques and tactics to choose in a sea of “trending” and “must-have” ones can be quite the challenge.
Let’s take a look at seven of the most important SEO techniques you should use as a startup.
Be Mindful of Search Intent
The first thing to consider when implementing SEO is search intent. If you get it right, you can ensure that a visitor finds you exactly when they need you.
Let’s put it this way. When someone is looking to buy your product, you want them to see a product page or your homepage. But if they just want to learn more about the product or how they can solve a particular problem, you want them to see your blog post on the topic.
By carefully analyzing search intent for each page you create, you can get this first part right. That way, you’ll have made it that much easier to direct traffic further down your sales funnel.
Take Keywords with a Grain of Salt
A lot of SEO experts hail keyword research and optimization as the pinnacle of success. In 2023, however, you need to forget about optimizing for one keyword or a set of keywords.
When written well, your page can actually rank for a lot of keywords. As long as you properly choose your main topic (or keyword, if you will) and make sure to insert it organically, you’ll do just fine.
What’s more important is to answer the questions people ask search engines. So, use the headings from the “people also search” suggestions, and you’ll see much better results than if you insert a specific keyword a specific number of times.
Write Well, If Not Often
How often you publish will have an impact on your rankings. It’s never been confirmed whether frequency of publishing is a ranking factor, but what we do know is that websites that publish content consistently tend to see better rankings.
However, this doesn’t mean that you need to publish every day or even every week. What you need to do is establish a schedule. If you can only manage two posts per month, make sure they are written exceptionally well.
Writing quality, well-researched, and digestible content will always get you better results than publishing a poorly written piece every day.
Be Careful Who You Work With
SEO is most often a collaborative sport. You can’t possibly do all of it yourself: do the research, write and promote the content, build the links and handle all the technical optimization.
Sooner or later, you will need to ask for help. Who you decide to work with can make all the difference. Sadly, a lot of SEO agencies promise fast results that they can’t sustain in the long run. A lot of them also execute all kinds of grey-hat techniques that may come back to haunt you with the next algorithm update.
Always aim to work with the best startup SEO agencies who have a proven track record and who are very clear about what you can expect. If they make promises that sound too good to be true, they probably are.
Ask to see a client they’ve worked with or at least some demonstration of sustainable results. If all they have is short-lived traffic or rankings, you are better off looking for someone else.
Make Sure to Nail the Technical Stuff
Technical SEO is the least glamorous and probably the most difficult element to get right. It involves a lot of understanding of code, servers, algorithms, and other bits that anyone who is not an expert will only be confused by.
If you want to execute a technical SEO audit yourself, you can use a checklist and see how much of it you are able to tick off. If you are hiring outside help, make sure they are also going through all the basics and handling all the main issues.
Note that your website will never be perfect: errors will always creep in, and you will need to do regular audits to keep up with any new demands from search engines.
Audit Your Link Portfolio
Even if you are not doing any link-building yourself, chances are you are naturally acquiring some links. Some of them may be great, but others can be spammy and harmful to your online reputation.
Every six months or so, do a backlink audit and disavow all the links that are not relevant, that come from spammy or untrustworthy websites, and that you really don’t want search engines to take into account.
Don’t stick to the quality of the site alone, though. You are expected to have links from small websites. You only want to get rid of the potentially harmful ones.
Manage Your Internal Links
Internal links are a very important part of your SEO strategy. The anchors you use for them and how you choose to place them can either give your website a boost or harm your rankings significantly.
Use an exact match anchor for each internal link, and use the most relevant keyword that you have optimized a page for. This will allow search engines to understand what the page is about and what you want it to rank for.
Also consider which links you want your audience to see. Think of them as signposts that you will use to direct traffic. If you mention a product or a feature, link to it. Reference as much of your own content as you can, as it will help you boost every important metric you can think of.
Wrapping Up
If you nail all of these seven SEO tactics, you will ensure that both search engines and your target audience love you. It will take some time to execute all of them, but the effort will certainly be worth it — especially in the long run. Choose your priorities carefully, and get to work