SEO For Startups: How To Use SEO To Energize Your Organic Traffic In The First Year

Are You Optimizing Your Content To Its Full Extent?

Starting a business is a daunting process. Trust us, we’ve been there. 

Several moving parts must come together when launching a startup, and one of the most challenging elements can be digital marketing.

Search engine optimization (SEO)—and digital marketing in general, for that matter—is still a fairly new concept, so it stands to reason that some businesses may struggle with it. But incorporating digital marketing into your startup’s marketing plan can be a game-changer in how you interact and build relationships with your audience. 

Fortunately, at Zutobi, we are here to help you optimize your content to its full extent so you can drive more online traffic and raise your brand’s visibility.

First Things First: Identify Keywords

Keywords help increase your search volume when driving traffic to your site. It’s important to ensure that the keywords you include within your copy are timely and relevant to your brand. 

Depending on the word or phrase, keywords range from high to low search volume. For beginner search engine optimizers, it’s a good rule of thumb to begin with more common keywords that are easy to rank, in order to show growth. This way, once you implement more advanced search engine optimization techniques, your site will be able to rank for multiple keywords. 

For example, at Zutobi, we work a lot with permit practice tests within different states. Therefore, a good keyword to start with when trying to optimize our copy could be “permit practice test.” Once we have a solid ranking for that, we can move on to more specifics, such as “free permit practice test,” “New York permit practice test,” “Massachusetts permit practice test,” etc.

Make Your Web Traffic Make Sense

When optimizing your copy, it’s important to make sure that you’re not simply trying to garner any web traffic – go for traffic that will specifically help your business. 

Make sure your keywords are answering the important questions, such as:

• What is our business all about?
• Whom do we help?
• What services do we provide?
• Where are we located?
• What can we offer that other competitors can’t?

Using Zutobi as an example again, we have an app that tries to help new drivers pass their permit/driving tests. Therefore, we want to optimize our copy in a way that will only drive that sort of traffic—no pun intended—to our page. 

So, instead of focusing on gaining just any web traffic, we want to gain an audience who is looking for tips to pass their driving test, for example. 

Set Yourself Apart

What makes your business different from your competitors, special to the customer, or unique in the industry?

This is something that should be blatantly apparent in the topics you’re writing about/optimizing. When someone stumbles across your site, they want to know why they should choose you, as opposed to your competitors.

When brainstorming topics, make sure to include one-of-a-kind insights, ideas, and explanations that resonate with the reader. Not only will this give you a unique edge in the industry, but it will also encourage your audience to take action.

Whether it’s your backstory, a unique selling point, or a brave claim, don’t be afraid to hone in on your brand’s individuality and amplify it. 

Remember: It’s A Marathon, Not A Sprint

Sometimes search engine optimization can take a while before you start noticing the high rankings you’re looking for on your site. 

It’s important to make sure you’re not putting too much hope into SEO for your first year or so in order to give your website and brand the time it needs to build up traction online. 

It can be difficult to remain patient when trying to grow your business, but the web traffic will continue to gradually increase as long as you’re following the correct steps. Remember that it’s a marathon, not a sprint, when it feels like the analytics aren’t budging.

Create A Schedule For Uploading Your Content

Once you begin noticing traction on your site, you’ll want to start uploading more content.

However, there is a fine line between having a content desert and overwhelming your website and social media sites with too much content. It’s important to find a balance between keeping your site tidy and releasing new posts, blogs, articles, and other content formats in a timely manner, in order to maintain your target audience’s interest.

That’s why it’s a good idea to create a content schedule. This can be done with creative or marketing teams to help brainstorm and produce thought-provoking content that will draw your audience in. 

A schedule will help you keep track of the amount of content you’re producing and the dates and times that garner the most traction. Therefore, you can discover what the best rate of posting is, the best times to post, and the topics that gain the most attention.

Iron Out The Technicalities

SEO simply won’t work if the technical aspects aren’t working. If your website is slow, buggy, or difficult to navigate, your search engine results are going to take a hit.

It is vital that you focus on the optimization of your website in order to give the search engines what they want: easy-to-use sites with quality content. That being said, it doesn’t mean upgrading to the newest and latest platform or splashing out on the most expensive hosting plan. A simple site with few plugins that functions well will suffice.

If you don’t have the technical skills to fix your site, hire someone with the correct knowledge to help you out. Do whatever it takes to make sure you ​have all the technicalities of your search engine optimization correct from the get-go in order to make sure you’re gaining the traffic you want. After all, you want all that hard work. 

Ready To Optimize Your Site?

You have the tools you need to successfully apply search engine optimization to your business!  By applying these SEO tips, you’ll have one less task on your plate. Begin driving the web traffic you’ve been dreaming of and get to optimizing your site today!

Author:

Tim Waldenback is the co-founder of Zutobi Drivers Ed, a gamified e-learning platform focused on online driver education to help teens get their license. Tim founded Zutobi to make world-class driver’s education fun, affordable, and easily accessible for all.