SEO 101: Definitive SEO Guide for Start-ups

Chapter One 

When you go online, you get to see a lot of people search for SEO guide. This is because Search Engine Optimization (SEO) could be a daunting task most especially for start-ups. Nevertheless, the giants and champions in SEO today all started from somewhere. SEO is not mission impossible as a lot of folks out there tend to see it.

It’s all about continuous learning coupled with implementation as it is one of the most dynamic areas in digital marketing. The techniques and tactics keep changing on a daily basis as search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo just to mention a few keep working and improving their algorithm.

A lot of start-ups are fully aware of the impact SEO has on their products and services. But they have no knowledge of how to go about it. Some companies even go as far as promising tons of followers to firms most especially start- ups, but on the long run, most of them do always fail to deliver on promises made. In this article, I’m going to show you how to do SEO for your startup without spending a dime. Below is an SEO guide how to go about doing that.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to do SEO for your startup without spending a dime. Below is an SEO guide how to go about doing that.

1. Research your keywords
2. Write and leverage on your content
3. Leverage on optimization

Research your keywords

One of the major pitfalls in SEO is keyword research. You do not just write blindly. Writing without prioritizing keywords to use will get you lost in the crowd. This happens irrespective of the number of contents you are able to come up with.

The first thing you need to understand about keyword research is the ‘user intent’. Put yourself in the position of a person looking to query an information. How is he/she going to phrase his/her sentence on google? Writing from the perfective of a user looking to query an information from the internet will help increase your chances of getting indexed by search engines.

Also, you need to focus on keywords having hits on search engines, tools such google keyword planner can really be of help when it comes to keyword research, as it gives you insights on what people as really searching for on the internet relating to your keyword, knowing this will help you focus on keywords that will generate traffic your website.

Having known the keyword to use, the next thing you do is to research the keyword for SEO competitiveness. It might take any start up years or even a decade to out-rank websites like Moz, Neil Patel and entrepreneur.com when it comes to ranking on search engines with the keywords such as ‘digital marketing’.

These guys will always rank high on every keyword relating to digital marketing. Competing with them is just like chasing the moon, but then, you could leverage on long-tail keywords. Longtail keywords pick you out of the crowd. It also gives a competitive edge of ranking high on searches related to your keyword.

Leverage on relevant content

Relevant contents are also very vital. In fact, it’s one of the most effective strategies which you can use to organically drive traffic to your website. Relevant contents keep your visitors coming back because they’ll always long for more. Take for instance lindaikeji and Nairaland, the two most popular blog and forum in Nigeria if not Africa.

These websites keep getting huge traffic on daily basis owing to the relevance of their contents. This is not totally dependent on that though. When you write relevant contents that synchronize with your target audience, they’ll be willing to sign up to your email list without having to persuade them to do so with annoying pop ups.

Optimize your website

I often recommend WordPress for beginners and start-ups, why?

1. WordPress comes with a lot of free plugins you can install yourself without any prior knowledge of web development.
2. You can also easily incorporate any WordPress website with a custom domain.
3. With just a click, you can easily install WordPress from the control panel of any web host out there. I recommend Whogohost (Nigerian host), HostGator, Inmotion.
4. You do not have to spend much on development because you can as easily get it setup yourself. In cases where you need help, I recommend you watch YouTube videos relating to the problems encountered.

Now back to the business of optimization. Optimizing your website is really what you must do to have any chance of ranking high and pulling traffic to your website. If your website takes a longer time to load pages, it will definitely increase your bounce rate to more 50%.

One of the most important and distinguishing features about Nairaland is it’s the load time. Nairaland takes split seconds to load even on the weakest of internet network. That’s how highly optimized the website is.

You also need to optimize your website for mobile responsiveness as a lot of people visit the internet with their mobile devices. Imagine if this website has not been optimized for mobile responsiveness, you are definitely not going to love what you are seeing as the whole interface will look so disorganized. Now that’s said, how can I optimize my website for mobile responsiveness? There are a lot of free plugins out there.

Plugins such as Jetpack, if installed on your WordPress powered website can easily help you optimize your website for mobile responsiveness. You could also leverage on SEO plugins such WPTouch, Yoast SEO, and Squirrly. These 3 plugins will guide you on how to write highly optimized contents. Yoast SEO alerts you if you’re over/under using your keywords or perhaps if you are stuffing your keywords in the wrong places.

By now, you must be full of ideas on how to do SEO for your website. I must tell you that, it takes time, patience, hard-work and continuous commitment towards learning to survive in SEO. The tactics and techniques keep changing by the day.

You just cannot afford not to update yourself on regulars basis, and that’s what Big Field Digital, one of the leading digital marketing agencies in Nigeria can help you with.

We make sure that you are updated all the times with the latest digital marketing strategies and trends in the industry. For more marketing tips, you can do well to subscribe to our email list.

 Watch out for Chapter 2