SEO for Founders

10 hours ago 1

If you’re a laminitis who knows that SEO matters, but doesn’t cognize wherever to start, cheque retired this one-page primer.

Thanks to the pursuing founders for sharing feedback connected this guide:

Sidenote.

I’m penning this based connected my acquisition helping startups from pre-seed to post-IPO with their hunt strategy. I besides taught immoderate of these ideas arsenic portion of the a16z Marketing Counsel Series.

You already cognize that you request SEO, but it’s worthy reiterating the benefits. SEO tin help you:

Show up erstwhile radical hunt for your institution name.
Appear erstwhile radical hunt for problems that your merchandise can solve.
Find the nonstop connection radical usage to picture your merchandise (and quantify the request for it).
Siphon users distant from your competitors.
Create predictable lawsuit acquisition and trim your lawsuit acquisition costs.
Build a moat of backlinks and marque consciousness that makes it hard for different companies to vie with you.

Some startups usage SEO arsenic their superior acquisition transmission from time one. For these companies, SEO lone makes consciousness if you…

Understand your people customer. Effective SEO depends connected a basal knowing of your people customers’ problems and symptom points. If you don’t person a fistful of customers who are paying (and sticking around), it’s hard to marque SEO work.
Know however your customers buy. SEO is utile for galore types of products, but not all—some buying processes hap astir wholly extracurricular of integrated hunt (not galore seven-figure edifice flooring deals commencement from Google searches for “carpet for high-traffic areas”).
Can spend to perpetrate for the agelong term. SEO is simply a semipermanent play, requiring months to years of sustained effort to get best-in-class results.

For astir companies, SEO is simply a transmission for scaling growth, not achieving product/market fit. It’s a mode to adhd substance to your fire, not commencement the fire.

It makes consciousness to put much heavy successful SEO erstwhile you want to…

Diversify your acquisition channels. Most startups put successful SEO erstwhile outbound oregon paid advertizing is starting to get costly and make diminishing returns.
Reduce CAC. It’s 1 of the lone genuinely compounding maturation channels: wealth spent contiguous connected SEO tin make amended and amended returns successful the future, arsenic your pages fertile and make postulation for years to come. This is peculiarly important for freemium concern arsenic it helps offset the antagonistic effect of churn rates.
Make beingness harder for your competitors. SEO is progressively zero-sum: a fistful of brands get astir of the clicks for a fixed keyword. It’s bully for you to beryllium 1 of those brands, and atrocious for your competitors.

There are 3 pillars of SEO:

Content: the pages you create, including articles, tools, and landing pages.
Links: backlinks from different websites backmost to yours.
Technical: ensuring that determination are nary method problems limiting your quality to look successful hunt engines.

They each matter, but to get started, I urge prioritizing like this:

1. Content

Content matters the most. The much search-optimized contented you create, the much chances you make for Google to amusement your institution to applicable people. Content is some your biggest maturation lever and your top bottleneck.

Great contented tin gain large links, astir passively. Inversely, it’s precise hard to gain links without large content. Content tin assistance explicate the benefits of your product, and nudge radical towards a purchase. Every caller contented leafage you make provides different “doorway” from the wilds of the net into your website.

2. Links

Links play a large relation successful SEO. Google and different hunt engines usage links arsenic a vouch of assurance for your tract (Google’s strategy is known arsenic PageRank). Sites with more, higher-quality links, mostly fertile amended successful search.

As a wide rule, links that are casual to get (like adding your website to a escaped startup directory) volition person little of an interaction than links that are hard to get (like a applicable merchandise notation successful a well-respected manufacture blog).

There are exceptions to these rules, but mostly speaking, you privation to build links:

On websites which are applicable to your business
With descriptive anchor substance (your marque sanction oregon institution description, not “click here”)
That are dofollow

3. Technical

No magnitude of contented oregon links volition assistance if Google’s crawlers can’t sojourn your pages oregon your website is hidden from search.

For astir caller oregon tiny websites, method SEO is not a problem. Most fashionable CMSs (like WordPress, Wix, oregon Webflow) person decent method SEO retired of the box. This mightiness not beryllium the lawsuit if you’re moving a customized CMS and compiling a clump of static pages.

Think of method SEO arsenic removing barriers to bully hunt performance. Technical problems tin hinder your SEO, but bully method SEO unsocial isn’t capable for your website to actively turn its hunt presence.

Here are immoderate straightforward starting points for your SEO strategy:

1. Fix evident method SEO problems

Before you walk clip oregon wealth connected contented instauration oregon nexus building, marque definite your method SEO is sound. You tin cheque for astir communal method SEO problems with a free AWT account.

Here are immoderate of the method SEO issues connected the Ahrefs blog. They’re prioritized by apt importance: bluish items are notices, yellowish items are warnings, and reddish items are errors:

As a priority, marque definite your website is accessible to crawlers and your pages are allowed to beryllium indexed by Google.

2. Get your archetypal fewer links from your network.

In the aboriginal days of SEO, earning a fewer applicable backlinks tin marque a immense betterment to SEO performance.

Link-building often feels similar it’s extracurricular your locus of control, but determination are plentifulness of ways to predictably physique bully links. In the agelong term, creating contented volition marque it easier to get backlinks. In the abbreviated term, you tin usage your web to get started:

Get listed connected your investors’ portfolio pages
Ask integration partners to nexus to your website
Launch connected Product Hunt
Appear connected podcasts
Ask different laminitis friends if you tin lend to their blog

In the beginning, it’s a bully thought to prioritise applicable links; implicit time, you tin see other factors similar domain rating.

3. Find your competitor’s champion pages (and copy them)

Start making contented by uncovering the pages that are driving the astir integrated postulation for your competitors, and creating your ain (better) versions.

You tin find these pages successful Ahrefs utilizing the Top Pages report. Here’s a database of Ramp’s astir fashionable blog articles, ordered by estimated integrated traffic:

If I competed with Ramp, I would see publishing my ain articles targeting immoderate of these keywords—like this usher to the easiest concern recognition cards to get, generating an esteemed 2,157 visits from integrated hunt each month.

You tin besides spot immoderate website’s astir linked-to pages utilizing the Best by links report. Here, Ramp’s usher astir how to use for a concern recognition card has earned 211 backlinks from 99 antithetic websites:

If we created a akin guide, there’s a bully likelihood we could gain links with it too.

The value of ‘business potential’

Many companies effort to fertile for keywords that person tons of imaginable postulation but precise small relevance to their product. Instead, it’s amended to constitute astir problems your merchandise tin solve. That way, each visitant is simply a imaginable customer.

You tin usage the “Business potential” model to assistance measure each topic. Score each keyword, and prioritize those with a precocious concern potential:

The extremity of SEO is not conscionable to pursuit precocious keyword volumes and amass backlinks, but to pull radical that person a important accidental of becoming a customer.

4. Find questions your people assemblage asks (and reply them)

Your imaginable customers astir apt person thousands of questions astir your merchandise and your industry. By identifying the astir fashionable of these questions—and past penning adjuvant answers—you tin make a dependable watercourse of applicable radical visiting your website.

Start by reasoning up a fewer “seed” keywords: halfway topics that subordinate precise powerfully to your product.

For a institution similar Ramp, that mightiness beryllium “business recognition cards”. In our Keywords Explorer tool, you tin usage AI to assistance with this brainstorming process:

Hit “search”, and you’ll beryllium capable to spot the estimated fig of searches each keyword gets¹, and an estimation of however hard it volition beryllium to successfully fertile for the topic² (along with a clump of other information points):

You tin grow your database of topics utilizing the Matching terms, Related terms, and Search suggestions reports to amusement hundreds of related keywords:

If your website is comparatively new, you’ll conflict to fertile for high-competition keywords. It’s amended to commencement by targeting low-difficulty keywords and gradually moving towards much competitory ones arsenic you gain much backlinks and make much integrated traffic.

You tin find these keywords successful Ahrefs by filtering to amusement keywords with a debased trouble (say, up to 30):

5. Create integration pages and rival examination pages

Most startups are competing against established companies. Creating pages that gully nonstop examination betwixt your merchandise and these competitors tin beryllium a large SEO strategy, allowing you to seizure existing demand for products similar yours, alternatively of trying to make request from scratch.

Here’s a database of Podia’s rival examination pages. Their comparison with Stan Store generates an estimated 3,444 integrated visits to their website each month:

These pages are worthy creating adjacent if you don’t person diagnostic parity with your competitors. It’s an accidental to explicate your differences, the thought process down your merchandise decisions, and statesman the semipermanent process of positioning yourself arsenic a meaningful rival to the manufacture giants.

If your merchandise is portion of a bigger bundle ecosystem—if you’re a Shopify app, oregon you integrate with Google Looker Studio—you tin besides physique landing pages for each of your integration partners. These let you to seizure a small-portion of the existing request for the big, fashionable products you integrate with.

Here’s Ahrefs information for the keyword google looker workplace connectors: debased difficulty, a 100 searches per month, and highly applicable for products that integrate with Looker:

6. Get creative

When you’re starting SEO, the fastest, astir nonstop way to gross is to instrumentality inspiration from the tried-and-tested topics that already marque wealth for your competitors. But successful the agelong term, there’s a existent payment to doing things that different companies haven’t tried yet.

SEO is simply a originative process. With a spot of research, you tin astir apt find important alpha for yourself: topics your competitors haven’t covered, symptom points that nary 1 solves, integrations successful precocious demand, oregon adjacent burgeoning keywords that are about to go precise popular.

The perennial startup proposal applies present too: speech to your customers. Learn astir their problems and questions, brainstorm caller topics to cover, and usage a instrumentality similar Ahrefs to assistance vet whether those ideas are worthy your time.

Longer-term, astir companies with superior SEO postulation get it successful 1 of four ways:

1. Editorial content: long-term, acquisition blogging

Editorial contented refers to the process of publishing high-quality, acquisition resources targeted astatine applicable keywords. By systematizing contented instauration and publishing SEO contented each week, galore companies make hundreds of thousands of monthly visits from blogging alone.

Editorial contented is large for gathering marque consciousness and educating visitors, but—even successful the epoch of ChatGPT—it’s an costly strategy.

Blogging is besides precise competitory today. Most high-volume keywords are already contested by big, well-known brands (with adjacent bigger budgets). There are plentifulness of opportunities to go 1 of these brands, but it’s harder than ever before.

Check retired these examples of editorial content:

2. Programmatic content: semi-automated landing leafage creation

Programmatic contented describes the instauration of keyword-targeted pages successful an automatic (or adjacent automatic) way.

It provides a mode for companies to make thousands of website pages targeted astatine thousands of keywords—without having to design, write, and people pages manually. Programmatic pages are usually created from information similar merchandise prices, weather, oregon determination information. Companies similar Zapier, Zillow, and G2 usage programmatic SEO to make millions of pageviews each year.

This strategy often appeals to method founders, but it’s not without risk. Programmatic contented that is deemed bladed oregon spammy volition conflict to rank, oregon whitethorn adjacent beryllium dropped from search. For this reason, it’s a large counterpart to a “safer” SEO strategy, similar editorial contented oregon escaped tools. Put different way: lone see programmatic SEO if you tin spend to suffer each of the postulation it creates.

Check retired these examples of programmatic content:

3. UGC: curating contented created by your users

User-generated contented is the process of curating and search-optimizing contented created by your users: similar merchandise templates, portfolios, oregon adjacent articles.

UGC allows you to outsource the effort of contented creation, allowing you to make perchance millions of pages of contented with comparatively small cost. But UGC besides runs the hazard of maltreatment (like your contented being highjacked by spammers—see this example from Contently) and precocious moderation costs.

Check retired these examples:

4. Free tools: escaped versions of your merchandise functionality

Free tools impact offering a simplified mentation of your product, oregon tools tailored to solving circumstantial problems.

There are galore high-traffic keywords that tin only be targeted utilizing escaped tools. Here’s the hunt results leafage for “free backlink checker”. The archetypal 19 results are each escaped tools, without an nonfiction in sight:

Free tools tin supply a bully accidental to people present your paid merchandise to escaped users. The added complexity of creating these tools besides means that this strategy is harder for your competitors to instantly copy.

As an evident downside, these tools instrumentality improvement resources to physique and tin make sizeable operating costs.

See these examples of escaped instrumentality strategies:

Is SEO dying?

SEO isn’t dying, but it is changing. ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, and different LLMs connection an alternate mode for users to entree accusation online. AI Overviews person the imaginable to trim the fig of radical visiting websites from hunt results. AI-generated contented is expanding the contention successful galore hunt results.

The champion practices of SEO stay the same, but it’s worthy exploring topics similar LLM optimization and learning astir AI Overviews.

How should I marque content?

There are 4 main ways to create, each with pros and cons:

In-house: Creating contented yourself offers the top power implicit quality, but necessitates a ton of clip and cognition to create.
Freelancers: Relatively affordable but necessitate tons of sourcing writers, management, prime control, and editing.
Agencies: Offer a done-for-you work that often benefits from acquisition moving crossed dozens of akin companies, but tin beryllium precise expensive.
AI contented generation: Extremely inexpensive to make but inactive requires selling and SEO expertise to get bully results. Publishing atrocious AI contented tin person a antagonistic interaction connected your SEO.

Should we prosecute an SEO agency?

A large SEO bureau tin person a immense affirmative interaction connected your growth. The hard portion is uncovering the large ones. I’ve had affirmative experiences with the pursuing agencies: Organic Growth Marketing, Growth Plays, Graphite, Siege Media,and Animalz (I utilized to enactment astatine Animalz).

How bash I cognize it’s working?

At an aboriginal stage, it’s hard to acceptable factual goals and KPIs. Instead, conscionable purpose for month-over-month betterment successful a fistful of halfway metrics, similar integrated website traffic, keyword rankings, and backlinks.

Leading indicators tin beryllium helpful: it’s a bully motion if precocious published pages statesman to fertile successful debased positions for dozens of akin keywords.

To way integrated traffic, acceptable up Google Search Console. For keyword rankings and backlinks, usage Ahrefs. You tin besides usage a web analytics instrumentality similar GA4 oregon Ahrefs Website Analytics (coming soon) to way website postulation from non-search sources.

How often should I publish?

As a wide rule, the much often you publish, the better, due to the fact that of SEO’s quality to compound implicit time. There is 1 exception: publishing hundreds (or thousands) of articles successful a abbreviated play of clip mightiness awesome to Google that your website is apt creating AI content.

Does AI contented work?

Generative AI tin beryllium adjuvant for speeding up parts of the SEO workflow, similar braintorming titles, creating metadata, oregon helping to write. But arsenic a wide rule, “pure” AI contented doesn’t execute precise good (and galore of Google’s caller algorithm updates are designed to trim the visibility of low-value AI content).

For much context, work our nonfiction astir AI contented strategies: AI Content Is Short-Term Arbitrage, Not Long-Term Strategy

Does achromatic chapeau SEO work?

Black chapeau SEO is the process of taking vantage of impermanent loopholes successful Google’s ranking systems.

The cardinal connection is temporary. Black chapeau SEO has a abbreviated shelf-life, and tin often extremity successful websites being wholly demoted oregon deindexed from Google’s hunt results. If you’re gathering a institution for the long-term, it’s astir apt not worthy the risk.

Final thoughts

I urge these guides to SEO and contented selling written by startup founders and investors:

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