Ask any professional seo services company, it’s no secret that search engines favour big brand websites with lots of links, well-known names, and big budgets for creating great content. There are even SEO specialists who offer their services only to start ups. This is why it can be daunting to launch a startup and succeed at SEO. But when a startup does well with its SEO, great things can happen including driving the necessary traffic to the site to make those much- needed sales.
If you’re starting a new business and don’t have the budget to hire an SEO expert to get you the results you need, you can still get your website pages ranked high in the search result pages so your targeted audience can find and connect with your business. And don’t worry that it will cost you a small fortune to get ranked high in the SERPs because the following tips can be done without hiring a professional SEO expert.
Check Your Design
The first thing you need to do is to make sure you have a well-designed site because a bad design will harm your SEO. Your website design should:
- Be well structured, with a simple layout that’s easy to navigate
- Without flamboyant ads and annoying pop-ups
- Have large enough print that’s easy to read
- Feature a pleasant, eye-catching design with colour
- Have good load times
In a nutshell, web design matters to SEO and it matters a lot. Your site’s design plays a major role in how your brand is perceived by both those who land on your site and the search engines that crawl it, so get it right from the get-go.
Target Your Lower Competition Keywords First
Even if your low competition long tail keywords aren’t the ones that best describe your business, it’s best to start focusing on them first. This is because it can be extremely difficult and even impossible to compete against the big brands with competitive keywords.
Even though your long tail keywords may not get you ranked in the top search results, they can increase your traffic, attract paying customers and grow your brand. To find longer variations of your main keywords, use Google’s Keyword Planner, type in your keyword, then scroll down to “Get ideas”.
Generate Content & Different Kinds of It
Now it’s time to start churning out content which can include any of the following:
- Blog posts
- Guest posts
- Podcasts
- Videos
- Tools and web apps
You need to focus more on just producing content for your shopping pages, product pages, etc because that type of content can only give you so much traffic. When you publish a nice variety of content, your site will attract more attention in the form of links and repeat traffic, which is awesome for your SEO.
Gain Authoritative Links
A rock-solid SEO plan involves getting some valuable links from authoritative sources like well-known bloggers in your industry, journalists, big brands, and leading organizations. When you get these types of authoritative sources to link to you, you’ll get some referral traffic and increase your brand exposure.
To gain authoritative links, mention or reference the sources you want links from in your content. You can also address questions, problems, or topics that interest these influencers. Putting out a press release to share business or product news is a good way to get picked up the media, which could could result in authority sites linking back to you.
Conclusion: You can’t expect your new business to compete with the big guns right out of the box. Your big competitors have more power than you do and you won’t beat them until you establish yourself as an authority. When tackling your search engine optimisation, focus on small, manageable wins. Create content your audience will care about and never pay for cheap SEO services that promise you the world.