Getting Started with SEO
Everything you need to know about SEO for a Small Business or Startup
This is a resource migrated from our previous website to Substack. Our goal with these resources is to help you advance your career and successfully scale into a small business. Now that we're on Substack, feel free to leave comments below if you have questions or need additional guidance!
As a Product Manager I have often worked cross-functionally across all teams of a company, having found my career start in marketing, the topic of SEO and Organic growth often comes across the table - especially when working on projects for startup clients.
I went ahead and prepared the following resource for any small business or startup out there looking to quickly get educated in the realm of SEO and organic marketing. It really doesn’t hurt to follow the best practices even if you aren’t looking to create content on your website - having a strong foundation goes a long way and sets you apart from the competition.
Simply put Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of making sure that your brand or business has improved visibility on available SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) - not to be confused with paid ads or other paid channels of marketing since SEO is focused towards long term gains in an organic matter.
In my experience, there are 3 categories of SEO:
On-Site SEO – relevant to anything that is indexable and visible on your primary web pages of the website, e.g Blogs, Landing Pages, FAQs, etc
Off-Site SEO – Anything that links back, or relates back to your website e.g Backlinks, Social Media posts, Guest Posts on other sites, etc
Technical SEO – Technical/Under the hood improvements you can make to your website to improve crawlers’ efficacy on your website
Brings us to the next point: what is an SEO Crawler?
You will hear the terms ‘crawl’ and ‘index’ a lot when discussing SEO with anyone. Basically, a crawler is a sort of automated robot/bot that scans your website for available information and then organizes it to be searchable by common search engines. Every crawler out there has its own unique way of doing things, but as long as you build out a strong foundation, you should be in the good.
So you design your pages, build the content, and develop your website - hit publish - then what?
Then let’s just say wait around 6 months for anything to happen - this number is just a good estimate before your SEO setup should kick in to help you rank in Google/Bing search results.
But you don’t have to wait 6 months and do nothing, this is where this document comes in handy, below is everything you need to know to get started with SEO.
How to build a strong SEO foundation as a small business or startup?
I love working with startups and having worked with so many, the biggest issue when it comes to marketing a startup is restraints. Hence, I want to start this piece out by laying out some ground rules for building strong foundations to build up your web presence.
Depending on what kind of business you are, you don’t need to bother with every aspect of SEO right out of the gate. The following table gives a good breakdown that should apply to most businesses out there:
Linked Tools on the Image (Substack doesn’t support tables :( ):
Hopefully, this table clears out what to prioritize when starting out your Business. Of course, over time you can incorporate everything, but getting the right start is very important. Knowing where to start is half the battle.
How to build a keyword research strategy?
The keyword for this article is going to be SEO of course, that being said the key word is a one-word theme for your page, piece, blog, etc - but we do have many kinds of keywords, here is my favorite representation of them by ahrefs:
So, how to research good keywords, you may ask. Here is an easy to get started with process:
Make a list of relevant words to your product or service.
Put them in a tool like Google's Keyword Planner to further iron out their validity.
Since this resource piece is meant for new businesses, let’s not worry about competition too much in terms of keywords - we need to set up a good foundation so for each of the keywords you believe you should rank for, put them in a whisper tool like https://answerthepublic.com/ - this will get you a really good idea for catering your content.
Once you have a list of your keywords, content ideas, and priority - start working on building out pages using the keywords - DON’T make the rookie mistake of forcefully stuffing the keyword over and over again in a page - make natural use of it. The keyword for this piece is SEO, and this was the 25th mention of it, but it felt natural, right?
Working with On-Page optimizations
Got your keywords? Good - time to get working on some On-Page optimizations, as the article so far is - let’s keep it simple, here is what you need to work on:
Always make sure that the page title, meta description, SEO title (the title that shows up in search results, URL, and page headings are consistent with each other in terms of keywords and readability. If you use WordPress, Yoast is a great tool to ensure this.
The structure is important! - Always have a table of content for longer pieces, H1 for your main headings, H2 for subs, H3 for other headings.
Use lightweight image and video formats for media content, such as .webm and .webp.
Keep your URLs simple and easy to remember - they must make sense to humans and bots - if your blog is a fancy blog name (like mine is called ‘the rift’) make sure the URL says /blog - don’t keep the bot guessing.
If your business requires to have a lot of content and media, opt in for a dedicated Content Delivery network, get an expensive hosting service that will be better optimized, such as https://wpengine.com/
Lastly, always have good CTAs, easy to contact information, and location info highlighted if a local business.
Content Creation for SEO
I once wrote a message on a whim to send to a friend over at LinkedIn and it turns out, that message is fully relevant here. Below is the list of types of content one can write, of course, there is a series of permutations and combinations that you can apply - but this should cover all the basics:
Content Category: How To Guides
Typical Length: 1,000-1,500 words
Audience: Top of the mind, new to niche users
Example: How to break into Product Management, How to write effective user stories, How to plan out your product research
Content Category: Listicles
Typical Length: 1,000-1,500 words
Audience: Trend watchers, people who search for group searches
Example: List of top PM tools, Top 5 prioritization methods you must use
Content Category: Personalized/Blogs - Your Story
Typical Length: 2,000-2,500 words
Audience: Long time followers
Example: My journey into PM, What I learnt from my experience with xyz
Content Category: Newsworthy Pieces
Typical Length: 300-800 words
Audience: News trends
Example: The UX behind the Latest iPhone 14, Why Tesla's new model is bound to fail, etc - anything that touches upon current news mixed with your niche
Content Category: Comparisons
Typical Length: 1,000-1,500 words
Audience: people looking to make a decision
Example: Technical vs Marketing product managers, Linkedin vs Indeed vs Angel Co - where to look for a PM job
Content Category: Infographics
Typical Length: 300-800 words
Audience: stat searchers
Example: top product companies by the numbers, features tied to revenue
Content Category: Checklists
Typical Length: 300-800 words
Audience: people searching for processes
Example: The definitive checklist for building a QSR appContent Category: Resources
Content Category: Resources
Typical Length: 1500-2500 words
Audience: people searching for resources and in depth research
Example: A deep dive into Product Management frameworks
Here’s a further improved version of this text if you wanna keep it as a resource:
Off-Page SEO efforts
In my opinion, getting Off-Page SEO right is the hardest endeavor (some argue it is the technical SEO instead, which has its own issues) - the reason simply being that most of the things you are doing for Off-Page SEO are a shot in the dark.
For new businesses, I often recommend not worrying too much about this aspect of SEO, but since this article is meant to educate, here are the steps you can take to improve your Off-Page SEO:
Backlinks, basically what it means is that websites and platforms out there with good authority and trust - should link back to your website - getting these links is basically 70% off the Off-Page SEO effort.
Reach out to websites to write blog posts about your products and services.
Write guest posts on other people’s websites and embed link back to your websites, with their permission of course.
Use social media posts and content as a way to link back to your site - though this way is seeing degradation these days.
AVOID spam links and especially avoid paying some random SEO EXPERT online to get you low-quality backlinks, THIS WILL doom your website forever after the short burst of engagement you get.
Invest in content marketing, building out other forms of content such as podcasts.
Register your business onto review sites such as Trustpilot or Clutch.
Working on technical SEO
The most overlooked part of SEO, technical mumbo jumbo - the fun thing is though that it is pretty easy to improve technical SEO for most simple CMS-based websites. Do this:
Run the following tool on your website
And do what it says
For most people honestly, it will be as simple as that but here is a bit more you need to know about:
Core Web Vitals are everything when it comes to technical SEO.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): calculates loading performance of your site.
First Input Delay (FID): measures how long it takes for your site to be interactive.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): are images breaking? No? Good.
Improve Mobile responsiveness! 60% of people use visit most sites on mobile, don’t go for over-the-top designs that will look basically garbage on a mobile screen.
sitemap.xml - just Google how to set it up.
Advanced thingy - you have been warned.
Use structured data to help search engines understand the content on your website. This includes schema markup, JSON-LD, and other types of structured data. Use https://schema.org/ to find premade schemas for you to use.
What is a schema? See, I told you it is advanced, even too advanced for me. The gist of it is that schema helps search engines categorize and understand the content better, think of them like advanced categories for your website pages.
Get an expensive hosting plan once you cross 10K visitors a month.
Move away from simple WYSIWYG based websites like Wix and Squarespace to a custom coded website or headless WordPress (this can be another 5,000 word article) or light weight custom theme WordPress or Webflow - basically to a more performant option.
In conclusion, as a small business or startup just grasping the points laid out in this article will get you across most competitors out there. A lot of what is here is quite easy to implement yourself with little know-how, and sure enough when you are raking in revenue - getting on a consultancy session and getting your site audited is a good way to have a strategy built out to bring improvements.
The SEO industry has turned into this money-grabbing and misleading user trust kind of thing where there are so many people claiming to rank your site if you pay them XYZ - that often leads to poor results in the long term and you will end up spending similar amounts to what you would have if you went with paid marketing/advertising.
The thing to take away here is that SEO is long-term, consistency matters over quantity, and as long as you are always optimizing your platform - it should outperform short bursts, trends, or fads - unless you are a news agency, ignore whatever I said then….
Here is the SEO bingo board as I call it, save a copy of this, whenever to remember what you need to do for your startup or small business:
Common SEO Mistakes Startups Frequently Make
Before we close of, here is another thing to be mindful of - As a startup or small business, it's easy to fall into common SEO traps. Here are some key mistakes to avoid to ensure you're on the right path:
Expecting Immediate Results:
SEO is a long-term strategy. Many startups mistakenly expect instant traffic boosts or immediate rankings after implementing SEO practices. In reality, noticeable results often take months.
Keyword Stuffing:
Overloading content with keywords doesn't fool search engines anymore - it actually penalizes your site. Write naturally, focusing on readability and value to your audience.
Ignoring Mobile Optimization:
If you’re a consumer focused business - more than half of all website traffic for you comes from mobile devices. If your site isn't responsive and fast-loading on mobile, you're losing potential customers and hurting your SEO.
Prioritizing Vanity Metrics:
Focusing too much on metrics like total visitors or social media likes, rather than meaningful data like conversion rates, engagement, and organic keyword rankings, can mislead you about your actual SEO effectiveness.
Neglecting Technical SEO Basics:
Simple oversights like broken links, poor site speed, missing sitemaps, and lack of HTTPS can negatively impact your rankings significantly, yet are often overlooked by startups in a hurry to launch.
Relying on Cheap or Paid Backlinks:
Quick fixes like purchasing low-quality backlinks may initially boost your rankings but inevitably harm your website’s authority and long-term ranking potential.
Not Creating Fresh or Updated Content:
Regularly updated, quality content keeps search engines interested. Ignoring consistent content creation or leaving outdated posts unrefreshed signals stagnation to crawlers.
Avoiding these common mistakes can put your startup ahead of many competitors, ensuring your SEO strategy contributes positively to your growth.
I Understand Everything! What to do Next? - Scaling Your SEO Strategy
The last thing I want to end this pretty long article on is scalability.
Calculating the effect of SEO is probably one of the hardest things out there, most businesses run a bunch of ads that boost their content and register wrongly as organic growth when in reality it is not that simple.
As a Product Manager, I can only guide you in the right direction, and the only way I know how to measure success is to look at the data. There are a treasure trove of tools available to constantly see how your site is performing against competitors, what your users are taking action on vs not on your site, and where to fill in the gaps when it comes to content, landing pages, FAQs, etc
Some examples:
User action analytics
Metric Tracker tools
SEO tools
And with this I hope you are now equipped to take on the challenge of growing your business or startup, organically.
Got questions or feedback? Share your comments below!