In case you’re a founder who is aware of that web optimization issues, however doesn’t know the place to start out, take a look at this one-page primer.
Due to the next founders for sharing suggestions on this information:
Sidenote.
I’m scripting this based mostly on my expertise serving to startups from pre-seed to post-IPO with their search technique. I additionally taught a few of these concepts as a part of the a16z Advertising and marketing Counsel Sequence.
You already know that you just want web optimization, but it surely’s price reiterating the advantages. web optimization will help you:
- Present up when folks seek for your organization title.
- Seem when folks seek for issues that your product can clear up.
- Discover the precise language folks use to explain your product (and quantify the demand for it).
- Siphon customers away out of your rivals.
- Create predictable buyer acquisition and cut back your buyer acquisition prices.
- Construct a moat of backlinks and model consciousness that makes it tough for different corporations to compete with you.
Some startups use web optimization as their major acquisition channel from day one. For these corporations, web optimization solely is smart if you…
- Perceive your goal buyer. Efficient web optimization relies on a primary understanding of your goal prospects’ issues and ache factors. In case you don’t have a handful of shoppers who’re paying (and sticking round), it’s exhausting to make web optimization work.
- Know the way your prospects purchase. web optimization is helpful for a lot of sorts of merchandise, however not all—some shopping for processes occur virtually completely exterior of natural search (not many seven-figure lodge flooring offers begin from Google searches for “carpet for high-traffic areas”).
- Can afford to commit for the long run. web optimization is a long-term play, requiring months to years of sustained effort to get best-in-class outcomes.
For many corporations, web optimization is a channel for scaling progress, not reaching product/market match. It’s a method so as to add gasoline to your fireplace, not begin the fireplace.
It is smart to take a position extra closely in web optimization if you need to…
- Diversify your acquisition channels. Most startups put money into web optimization when outbound or paid promoting is beginning to get costly and generate diminishing returns.
- Scale back CAC. It’s one of many solely really compounding progress channels: cash spent in the present day on web optimization can generate higher and higher returns sooner or later, as your pages rank and generate visitors for years to come back. That is significantly essential for freemium enterprise because it helps offset the unfavourable impact of churn charges.
- Make life more durable on your rivals. web optimization is more and more zero-sum: a handful of manufacturers get many of the clicks for a given key phrase. It’s good so that you can be a type of manufacturers, and unhealthy on your rivals.
There are three pillars of web optimization:
- Content material: the pages you create, together with articles, instruments, and touchdown pages.
- Hyperlinks: backlinks from different web sites again to yours.
- Technical: guaranteeing that there are not any technical issues limiting your capability to seem in search engines like google and yahoo.
All of them matter, however to get began, I like to recommend prioritizing like this:
1. Content material
Content material issues essentially the most. The extra search-optimized content material you create, the extra probabilities you create for Google to point out your organization to related folks. Content material is each your greatest progress lever and your best bottleneck.
Nice content material can earn nice hyperlinks, virtually passively. Inversely, it’s very exhausting to earn hyperlinks with out nice content material. Content material will help clarify the advantages of your product, and nudge folks in direction of a purchase order. Each new content material web page you create offers one other “doorway” from the wilds of the web into your web site.
2. Hyperlinks
Hyperlinks play a giant function in web optimization. Google and different search engines like google and yahoo use hyperlinks as a vouch of confidence on your web site (Google’s system is called PageRank). Sites with more, higher-quality links, generally rank better in search.
As a general rule, links that are easy to get (like adding your website to a free startup directory) will have less of an impact than links that are difficult to get (like a relevant product mention in a well-respected industry blog).
There are exceptions to these rules, but generally speaking, you want to build links:
- On websites which are relevant to your business
- With descriptive anchor text (your brand name or company description, not “click here”)
- That are dofollow
3. Technical
No amount of content or links will help if Google’s crawlers can’t visit your pages or your website is hidden from search.
For most new or small websites, technical SEO is not a problem. Most popular CMSs (like WordPress, Wix, or Webflow) have decent technical SEO out of the box. This might not be the case if you’re running a custom CMS and compiling a bunch of static pages.
Think of technical SEO as removing barriers to good search performance. Technical problems can hinder your SEO, but good technical SEO alone isn’t enough for your website to actively grow its search presence.
Here are some straightforward starting points for your SEO strategy:
1. Fix obvious technical SEO problems
Before you spend time or money on content creation or link building, make sure your technical SEO is sound. You can check for most common technical SEO problems with a free AWT account.
Here are some of the technical SEO issues on the Ahrefs blog. They’re prioritized by likely importance: blue items are notices, yellow items are warnings, and red items are errors:
As a priority, make sure your website is accessible to crawlers and your pages are allowed to be indexed by Google.
2. Get your first few links from your network.
In the early days of SEO, earning a few relevant backlinks can make a huge improvement to SEO performance.
Link-building often feels like it’s outside your locus of control, but there are plenty of ways to predictably build good links. In the long term, creating content will make it easier to acquire backlinks. In the short term, you can use your network to get started:
- Get listed on your investors’ portfolio pages
- Ask integration partners to link to your website
- Launch on Product Hunt
- Appear on podcasts
- Ask other founder friends if you can contribute to their blog
In the beginning, it’s a good idea to prioritise relevant links; over time, you can consider extra factors like domain rating.
3. Find your competitor’s best pages (and copy them)
Start making content by finding the pages that are driving the most organic traffic for your competitors, and creating your own (better) versions.
You can find these pages in Ahrefs using the Top Pages report. Here’s a list of Ramp’s hottest weblog articles, ordered by estimated natural visitors:
If I competed with Ramp, I’d contemplate publishing my very own articles concentrating on a few of these key phrases—like this information to the best enterprise bank cards to get, producing an esteemed 2,157 visits from natural search every month.
It’s also possible to see any web site’s most linked-to pages utilizing the Greatest by hyperlinks report. Right here, Ramp’s information about apply for a enterprise bank card has earned 211 backlinks from 99 completely different web sites:
If we created an analogous information, there’s a great probability we may earn hyperlinks with it too.
The significance of ‘enterprise potential’
Many corporations attempt to rank for key phrases which have a lot of potential visitors however little or no relevance to their product. As an alternative, it’s higher to jot down about issues your product can clear up. That method, each customer is a possible buyer.
You need to use the “Enterprise potential” framework to assist consider every subject. Rating every key phrase, and prioritize these with a excessive enterprise potential:
The purpose of web optimization is not only to chase excessive key phrase volumes and amass backlinks, however to draw those that have a considerable probability of turning into a buyer.
4. Discover questions your target market asks (and reply them)
Your potential prospects in all probability have 1000’s of questions on your product and your trade. By figuring out the preferred of those questions—after which writing useful solutions—you may create a gradual stream of related folks visiting your web site.
Begin by pondering up a number of “seed” key phrases: core matters that relate very strongly to your product.
For a corporation like Ramp, that is perhaps “enterprise bank cards”. In our Key phrases Explorer software, you should utilize AI to assist with this brainstorming course of:
Hit “search”, and also you’ll be capable of see the estimated variety of searches every key phrase gets¹, and an estimate of how tough it is going to be to efficiently rank for the topic² (together with a bunch of additional information factors):
You’ll be able to develop your record of matters utilizing the Matching phrases, Associated phrases, and Search solutions experiences to point out lots of of associated key phrases:
In case your web site is comparatively new, you’ll battle to rank for high-competition key phrases. It’s higher to start out by concentrating on low-difficulty key phrases and regularly working in direction of extra aggressive ones as you earn extra backlinks and generate extra natural visitors.
Yow will discover these key phrases in Ahrefs by filtering to point out key phrases with a low problem (say, as much as 30):
5. Create integration pages and competitor comparability pages
Most startups are competing in opposition to established corporations. Creating pages that draw direct comparability between your product and these rivals generally is a nice web optimization technique, permitting you to seize current demand for merchandise like yours, as an alternative of making an attempt to create demand from scratch.
Right here’s an inventory of Podia’s competitor comparability pages. Their comparison with Stan Store generates an estimated 3,444 natural visits to their web site every month:
These pages are price creating even in the event you don’t have function parity together with your rivals. It’s a chance to clarify your variations, the thought course of behind your product choices, and start the long-term technique of positioning your self as a significant competitor to the trade giants.
In case your product is a part of an even bigger software program ecosystem—in the event you’re a Shopify app, otherwise you combine with Google Looker Studio—you too can construct touchdown pages for every of your integration companions. These will let you seize a small-portion of the prevailing demand for the large, in style merchandise you combine with.
Right here’s Ahrefs information for the key phrase google looker studio connectors: low problem, 100 searches per thirty days, and extremely related for merchandise that combine with Looker:
6. Get inventive
Whenever you’re beginning web optimization, the quickest, most direct path to income is to take inspiration from the tried-and-tested matters that already earn cash on your rivals. However in the long run, there’s an actual profit to doing issues that different corporations haven’t tried but.
web optimization is a inventive course of. With a little bit of analysis, you may in all probability discover vital alpha for your self: matters your rivals haven’t lined, ache factors that nobody solves, integrations in excessive demand, and even burgeoning key phrases which can be about to turn out to be highly regarded.
The perennial startup recommendation applies right here too: discuss to your prospects. Study their issues and questions, brainstorm new matters to cowl, and use a software like Ahrefs to assist vet whether or not these concepts are price your time.
Longer-term, most corporations with critical web optimization visitors purchase it in one in all 4 methods:
1. Editorial content material: long-term, instructional running a blog
Editorial content material refers back to the technique of publishing high-quality, instructional assets focused at related key phrases. By systematizing content material creation and publishing web optimization content material each week, many corporations generate lots of of 1000’s of month-to-month visits from running a blog alone.
Editorial content material is nice for constructing model consciousness and educating guests, however—even within the period of ChatGPT—it’s an costly technique.
Running a blog can also be very aggressive in the present day. Most high-volume key phrases are already contested by large, well-known manufacturers (with even larger budgets). There are many alternatives to turn out to be one in all these manufacturers, but it surely’s more durable than ever earlier than.
Take a look at these examples of editorial content material:
2. Programmatic content material: semi-automated touchdown web page creation
Programmatic content material describes the creation of keyword-targeted pages in an computerized (or close to computerized) method.
It offers a method for corporations to create 1000’s of web site pages focused at 1000’s of key phrases—with out having to design, write, and publish pages manually. Programmatic pages are often created from information like product costs, climate, or location data. Firms like Zapier, Zillow, and G2 use programmatic web optimization to generate hundreds of thousands of pageviews every yr.
This technique typically appeals to technical founders, but it surely’s not with out danger. Programmatic content material that’s deemed skinny or spammy will battle to rank, or could even be dropped from search. Because of this, it’s a terrific counterpart to a “safer” web optimization technique, like editorial content material or free instruments. Put one other method: solely contemplate programmatic web optimization in the event you can afford to lose the entire visitors it creates.
Take a look at these examples of programmatic content material:
3. UGC: curating content material created by your customers
Consumer-generated content material is the method of curating and search-optimizing content material created by your customers: like product templates, portfolios, and even articles.
UGC lets you outsource the trouble of content material creation, permitting you to generate probably hundreds of thousands of pages of content material with comparatively little price. However UGC additionally runs the chance of abuse (like your content material being highjacked by spammers—see this example from Contently) and high moderation costs.
Check out these examples:
4. Free tools: free versions of your product functionality
Free tools involve offering a simplified version of your product, or tools tailored to solving specific problems.
There are many high-traffic keywords that can only be targeted using free tools. Here’s the search results page for “free backlink checker”. The first 19 results are all free tools, without an article in sight:
Free tools can provide a good opportunity to naturally introduce your paid product to free users. The added complexity of creating these tools also means that this strategy is harder for your competitors to immediately copy.
As an obvious downside, these tools take development resources to build and can generate sizeable operating costs.
See these examples of free tool strategies:
Is SEO dying?
SEO isn’t dying, but it is changing. ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, and other LLMs offer an alternate way for users to access information online. AI Overviews have the potential to reduce the number of people visiting websites from search results. AI-generated content is increasing the competition in many search results.
The best practices of SEO remain the same, but it’s worth exploring topics like LLM optimization and learning about AI Overviews.
How should I make content?
There are four main ways to create, each with pros and cons:
- In-house: Creating content yourself offers the greatest control over quality, but necessitates a ton of time and knowledge to create.
- Freelancers: Relatively affordable but require lots of sourcing writers, management, quality control, and editing.
- Agencies: Offer a done-for-you service that often benefits from experience working across dozens of similar companies, but can be very expensive.
- AI content generation: Extremely cheap to create but still requires marketing and SEO expertise to get good results. Publishing bad AI content can have a negative impact on your SEO.
Should we hire an SEO agency?
A great SEO agency can have a huge positive impact on your growth. The hard part is finding the great ones. I’ve had positive experiences with the following agencies: Organic Growth Marketing, Growth Plays, Graphite, Siege Media,and Animalz (I used to work at Animalz).
How do I do know it’s working?
At an early stage, it’s exhausting to set concrete objectives and KPIs. As an alternative, simply intention for month-over-month enchancment in a handful of core metrics, like natural web site visitors, key phrase rankings, and backlinks.
Main indicators may be useful: it’s a great signal if not too long ago revealed pages start to rank in low positions for dozens of comparable key phrases.
To trace natural visitors, arrange Google Search Console. For key phrase rankings and backlinks, use Ahrefs. It’s also possible to use an online analytics software like GA4 or Ahrefs Web site Analytics (coming quickly) to trace web site visitors from non-search sources.
How typically ought to I publish?
As a basic rule, the extra typically you publish, the higher, due to web optimization’s capability to compound over time. There’s one exception: publishing lots of (or 1000’s) of articles in a brief time period would possibly sign to Google that your web site is probably going creating AI content material.
Does AI content material work?
Generative AI may be useful for rushing up elements of the web optimization workflow, like braintorming titles, creating metadata, or serving to to jot down. However as a basic rule, “pure” AI content material doesn’t carry out very nicely (and lots of of Google’s latest algorithm updates are designed to scale back the visibility of low-value AI content material).
For extra context, learn our article about AI content material methods: AI Content material Is Brief-Time period Arbitrage, Not Lengthy-Time period Technique
Does black hat web optimization work?
The important thing phrase is short-term. Black hat web optimization has a brief shelf-life, and may typically finish in web sites being fully demoted or deindexed from Google’s search outcomes. In case you’re constructing an organization for the long-term, it’s in all probability not definitely worth the danger.
Remaining ideas
I like to recommend these guides to web optimization and content material advertising and marketing written by startup founders and traders:
