SEO solutions are now more complicated as search engine web crawlers have learned how to filter out spam and look for high-quality, relevant content. If you want to know which solutions your startup could be implemented from day one to get the highest rankings you can, follow the 14 steps below (especially #7)

While most small businesses spending half of their marketing budget on digital marketing, startups don’t always know their dollars are being spent wisely.

If resources focused on search engine optimization aren’t targeting the right audience, funds could be better off down the toilet. Before you write another check for SEO services, your startup needs to make sure you’re taking care of basic SEO solutions from in-house.

As nearly every investor and customer finds out about new businesses through search engines, startups need to be search engine optimized. While keywords used to be the number one way to get your site ranked highly, times have changed.

1. Update Early and Often

The website for your startup isn’t a static thing you set up and forget about for 10 years. As mobile browsing has surpassed desktop browsing, users are going to be looking at your site on a new set of devices every few years. While browsers will attempt to make your site look good, you need to keep an eye on it to make sure it looks the way you want on every device.

Websites that load slowly, look disorganized, and have complicated menus will suffer when web crawlers rank you in their search results. Make sure you’re mobile optimized and even considering mobile first before you move to desktop displays. Check out Bluehost’s powerful hosting.

2. Have Quality Content

Search engines want to see that you’re posting new content on your site often. If you haven’t set one up yet, you should consider adding a blog to your website and set aside some portion of each day or each week to update that blog.

If you can link to what’s going on in the news or globally, you’ll be rewarded with a high ranking. The amount of news you share and the frequency of your quality posts will have an effect on how search engines treat you.

Add keywords and backlinks to your posts. Put it on social media and try to make it pick up some momentum. You will be rewarded with more traffic from search engines. Check out: The Benefits of High-Quality Content: How Content Consistency Drives Your Brand Forward

3. Stay Relevant and Unique

If you’re using keywords about a certain thing in the tech industry and then start talking about pie recipes, you might not be supported by search engines. Before you post any content, make sure that it’s relevant to your industry.

Duplicate content is frowned upon by search engines and your posts will end up either flagged or ranked lower because of that. Before you copy and paste, make sure that you link back to where you got it from. That way you’ll avoid plagiarism, build connections, and won’t be harassed by any search engines.

4. Titles and Tags

Shaping up page titles and related tags are important and simple SEO solutions that any startup should be paying attention to. Be sure that they’re easy for both search engines and readers to understand.

Titles and tags should include not just single keywords but phrases relevant to your page. Keep it brief whenever possible. Tags that are 60 characters or less are ideal. Otherwise, you might see them awkwardly abbreviate when users search for your content. Not sure how to check our website’s title tags, check out this Title tag preview tool.

5. Meta Descriptions

Search engines and visitors both rely on a page’s meta description to figure out what your page is about. When they see the title, the text underneath will tell visitors whether or not they want to click on your page.

Whenever you’re crafting a post, take advantage of this as one of your most pressing SEO solutions. Without good meta descriptions, your rankings might not mean a whole lot.

Again, keep it brief but descriptive. Descriptions that are kept under 150 characters will be easy on a reader’s eyes while selling them on your page.

 

6. WordPress SEO

If you’re a WordPress user, the platform provides some great SEO solutions for free. If you have to pick just one, Yoast SEO is one of the best tools around. All in One SEO Pack is another great op WordPress SEO plugin.

Yoast SEO will check your on-page SEO factors and give you a rating based on your posts. Once you choose a keyword that your post will be built on, it will ensure that you’ve optimized that term in your tags and meta description.

You get a short preview of how your post will show up in search engines and a list of possible improvements you could make.

7. Outbound Linking

In order to get links, you’ve got to give them. If you love the way a writer talks about a subject, link one of their articles in your next post.

Reach out to the author or company and let them know that you’ve linked to them and ask if they’ll share the love. Building a community between different sites will help your startup build your brand authority with search engines.

Getting your content reposted or linked by other sites can be one of the biggest boosts to traffic while being one of the easiest to implement SEO solutions around. Check out The Perfect Link Request.

8. Inbound Linking

Don’t be shy to link to your own content. If you’re really happy with an earlier post or a really important product, link to it. Good marketers will tell you inbound marketing is always the way to go with digital marketing.

Internal linking will allow readers to find other important content they might have missed. It also looks good to search engines when their web crawlers index your site. Just be sure none of your links go down because that could bring bad marks from search engines. For more Advanced Techniques, check out how to get the most out of your links.

9. Say No to Spam

If you’re really laying it on thick in a post, take a second to reconsider. Search engine algorithms have never been smarter and they know when you’re using links awkwardly or for clearly promotional ends.

Just like anyone else, search engines want to be served up quality content.

It’s great if you want to post or comment on other blogs. Use social media for anything that’s more overtly promotional so that your site doesn’t suffer.

10. Pictures Need 1000 Words

Okay maybe they don’t need 1000 words, but a few would help. If your startup has some great photos you want to add to your website, use standard descriptive naming practices.

While your camera might name the image XYZ123.JPG for its own purposes, that will look as clunky to search engine as it does to us. Try hyphen separated phrases like “dutch-apple-pie-slice.JPG”.

11. Image Tags

The text and image titles you add in your page’s HTML will help search engines get an idea of what’s going on with your page. These descriptions are useful for people with accessibility issues to get an idea of what’s on your site.

Also, if your page fails to load, the title will appear, giving visitors at least some idea of what they would see if not for the error. This is one of the few SEO solutions that are smart for your rankings and also considerate of people with visual impairments.

12. Fix Your File Size

Large images can take forever to load, slowing down how quickly users can access your site. In that time, they might decide to check out another site. Additionally, search engines will rank your page based on how quickly it loads.

Lots of content management systems will help to shrink your files, but they don’t necessarily care as much about the quality of your images as you do. WP Smush is one of the best image optimization and compression plugins.

One of the basic SEO solutions to employ is to look at how many pixels wide your blogs are. Ensure that all of your images are that width or smaller. Then you can save images in your preferred format without risking any loss of quality.

13. Share Your Images

Take a look at what works for different platforms. If you’re a big Pinterest user, link your site to your startup’s Pinterest account.

Take note of what works best on that platform. Pinterest images that are taller than they are wide tend to get shared more. Text that features words gets longer views.

If your startup uses Instagram, make sure you’re taking the time to add filters to your images. Instagram prefers square images, so be sure your images look good in a square dimension.

14. Balance Text and Images

Web crawlers won’t see the content inside of your images, no matter how well your images perform. Any text inside your images should also be included as content or part of your keywords. Quick SEO solutions like a short image description can go a long way. It is important to balance text and visual elements.

15. Take Advantage of Google Authorship – Dead in 2018

Have all of your posters and writers set up a Google+ account. This way, Google will build the legitimacy of the posts on your site as well as the legitimacy of your authors.

Google will rank the quality of an author’s work as either spam or real based on the legitimacy of their Authorship account. Google will build the profile of your startup and authors based on this fact.

SEO Solutions Can Be Implemented Quickly

You don’t have to wait for your web designer to come back from vacation or to call in the cavalry to implement all of these SEO solutions. High-quality SEO services will do all of this or more. Starting off on a good foot, however, means you can get a strong estimate to see what SEO services can do for your company.

If you’re ready for some new SEO solutions, contact us for more information.