In today’s digital world, running a business is a difficult task. Entrepreneurs and business owners have more opportunities than ever before to connect with customers, but it can be difficult to know where to begin, particularly when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). Understanding what should take precedence when nearly everything needs to be done yesterday is downright difficult.

Understanding the fundamental strategies that make websites search engine friendly is the first step in leveraging search engines for traffic. Millions of searches are conducted each month around the world, and some of those searchers may end up on your site if everything goes as planned.

Starting your SEO from scratch does not have to be as difficult as you may believe. You’ll be well on your way to SEO success in no time with a little ingenuity, education, and planning. In this article, you’ll learn some of the most important SEO fundamentals as well as how to grow your organic traffic fast. (Related: 2022 SEO Guide for Startups)

What Are Search Engines Looking For?

Before we get into the specific steps you can take to optimize and create an SEO strategy for your startup, it’s important to understand what search engines are looking for.

While there are numerous ranking factors, much of SEO can be divided into a few distinct categories and SEO tips:

• Content: Your website’s pages should respond to search queries. You should create content based on what your target audience is searching for.
• Backlinks: Backlinks, also known as inbound links, are links from another site that points back to your site. These are extremely important signals to search engines that your content is trustworthy.
• Technical SEO: This entails ensuring that your website is technically sound, that it is fast and loads within three seconds on mobile, that the usability is good on both desktop and mobile, and that the content is easy to find and consume.

Best Tips to Use SEO for Startups to Grow Organic Traffic

1. Boost website speed and usability. 

The first step before creating any content or attempting any link building is to ensure that your website is fast and easy to use. If your website is slow, visitors will leave and look for a faster solution. This sends a negative signal to search engines and may have an impact on rankings. You can check your current page speed using Google’s PageSpeed Insight tool.

2. Determine the types of content to create based on the buyer’s journey.

The importance of content (based on keyword research) in acquiring customers through SEO cannot be overstated. You can’t expect to drive 50,000 qualified buyers to your website with just a homepage, about page, and pricing page. People must find your website through various keyword searches at various stages of their purchasing journey.

3. Perform on-page SEO. 

After you’ve created publish-ready content for a specific keyword, you’ll want to focus on on-page factors to improve your SEO content.

What exactly is on-page SEO optimization? Essentially, you are optimizing the title, the meta description (the description of a page that appears in search results), images, and other factors.

While on-page optimization does not directly affect rankings, it does provide a better user experience. People stay longer, convert more frequently, and spend more when they have a better user experience.

4. Prioritize link building and digital PR.

Inbound links, also known as backlinks, are links that point from another website to yours. Link building is a critical component of organically ranking well. Links from other websites indicate to Google that your content is trustworthy and useful to readers. You want high-quality links pointing to your website.

5. Track and measure.

Finally, how do you measure SEO success? What metrics should you pay attention to? The SEO metrics you’ll be tracking the most frequently, depending on your goals, are:

• Organic traffic – The number of visitors you receive from search engine results pages (SERPs). Website analytics software such as Google Analytics, Matomo, Google Search Console, and Ahrefs can be used to measure this.
• Organic keywords – These are the keywords for which your web pages rank. Some website analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, will hide some keywords under the “not provided” category, while others, such as Google Search Console, will only show a subset of them. A tool like AWT will take care of that for you.
• Keyword rankings – Where you rank in the SERPs for tracked keywords over time. Visit our free keyword rank checker tool for a simple, no-cost solution.
• Backlinks – These are links from other websites to your website. Backlinks, as previously stated, are one of the most important ranking factors. 

You don’t need a large budget to begin increasing organic traffic with SEO. You can get a lot done with free tools, and the paid tools you’ll need after that won’t cost you a fortune. The beginning is always the most difficult part of anything, as it is with many things in life. Getting your SEO up and running may take some time. However, once you’ve done so, you can repeat the same strategies for consistent results with compounding effects.

If you need help building your organic traffic, you may consult us today! We build and design websites that are optimised for search engines.