Getting started with a basic SEO strategy

If your startup lacks a marketing budget, an inbound marketing program can be the key to connecting with your customers. And no inbound marketing program is complete without at least a basic search engine optimization (SEO) component.

If you’re a non-technical entrepreneur, SEO can seem a little intimidating. It doesn’t have to be. You don’t have know what Penguin or Panda is to be successful with search engine optimization and inbound marketing.

While content is still king and you need to ensure your site is SEO friendly from a structure perspective, optimizing for search engines can actually be a relatively painless process. A basic SEO strategy can be executed in a little as one hour from week-to-week.

Here are the three important elements your week-to-week SEO strategy should include:

• SEO Tools Using an SEO tool (or several) is a great first step of any SEO strategy, as they help you monitor your progress over time and drastically simplify the management process. The internet is littered with free tools (don’t miss this post on 100 free SEO tools) that can be extremely valuable for SEO, but investing in a premium tool like Moz is worth the relatively minuscule cost. On a week-to-week basis, be sure to keep your tool settings up to date to get the most value from your efforts.

• Content & On-Page Optimization The entire purpose of search engines is to connect people with great content that meets their needs. Make a habit of skimming your content (including website copy, blog posts, white papers, ebooks, videos, etc.) each week to ensure your keywords and content is up to date. Make a habit of tweaking your content to target ‘long-tail’ keywords that add the most value. Go through old posts and update meta descriptions and keywords. But remember, while keyword optimization is important for SEO, your website is still fundamentally about building relationships with people. Don’t overstuff or sound like a robot. To get started, use tools like Google’s recently updated Keyword Planning Tool as part of your week-to-week content and on-age optimization effort.

• Link Building As great as content and on-page optimization is for search engine optimization, links are what are truly valuable when it comes to SEO. Search engines love social proof, and in the eyes of search engines that social proof manifests itself in the form of links to your website from other websites. Here’s a great list of 32 white hat (the good kind) ways to build links to your site from HubSpot. The long and short of it? Create great content and SEO will take care of itself.

If you’d like to learn more about how a simple SEO strategy can help your startup get found more often on search engines, feel free to reach out to me.