Marketing is a challenge for every startup. As a successful startup ourselves, here at SE Ranking, we know how hard (and painful) it can be to grow in the early days, especially when you’re competing against industry leaders like Moz.
We know from our own experience what it means to deal with a limited budget, work 24/7, and be a one-man band. But we also know how rewarding (and fun) it is to develop a new business and watch it succeed.
As a startup, a great place to kick-start growth is to utilize SEO (search engine optimization) to drive new customers to your business. We’ve developed an SEO platform (a cheaper, yet more robust alternative to Moz) that can do a lot of legwork for you and put your company on a path to success.
In this article we’ll review ten ways SE Ranking can help your startup crush SEO:
1. First things first: Conduct an SEO audit.
Even if you just launched your website, it doesn’t mean you don’t need to audit it. In fact, you have to do a thorough inspection to make sure all errors are eliminated and it’s ready to face your intended audience.
SE Ranking checks your site against 70 parameters – domain overview (age, location, expiration etc.), pages, links, content, images and meta-analysis, mobile optimization and usability.
The audit will provide a detailed description of each section, highlight the important and semi-important errors you need to fix and the recommendations on how to eliminate them.
2. Research and update keywords for your site’s semantic core.
Even if your website is already ranking for some keywords, don’t stop there. Use the SE Ranking keyword suggestion tool (that has more than 2 billion unique search queries in its internal database) to find and carefully select the keywords you’re missing out on.
By the way, you’ll get a detail report which includes: monthly search volume, KEI (keyword efficiency index), competition, suggestion bid, the number of search results and the rankings.
You can also use SE Ranking to get a fantastic set of long tail keyword suggestions. You can check their search volume and choose the most relevant keywords to be added to the website semantic core of your website.
3. Analyse the TOP SERP results.
If you strive to get to the top of SERPs (search engine results pages) use SE Rankings to see who is already there and why (domain age, authority, backlinks etc.)? SE Ranking has website audit and backlink explorer tools that can help you get a precise picture of your startup niche.
To check the top 10 for your niche, first, choose the keyword from your project list (you add these keywords at the first stage of creating a project). Then you will see the websites that have top rankings for this keyword.
In the chart above you will also see Alexa and MOZ DA parameters for these websites as well as backlinks data. Moreover, you can create your own tags and add them to the selected domains.
4. Monitor keyword rankings to track progress.
93% of online experiences begin with a search engine. That’s why it’s very important to monitor your rankings day by day.
How can you track progress if you don’t know what was before and what’s after? Create a project in SE Ranking, add your keywords and get precise rankings for any location in the world.
Track your website performances via clear charts and tables, and you will see what keywords enter or leave the TOP on the go.
5. Keep mobile in mind.
When planning your SEO strategy don’t ignore mobile as it’s one of the most discussed SEO must-haves in 2018.
Make sure that your website works and looks good when viewed on smartphone and tablet. You can check it using SE Ranking website audit.
SE Ranking will also show you how your site ranks for mobile search as it’s completely different from the desktop results.
6. Learn from your competitors.
It’s very difficult to get ahead of the competition if you don’t know what your competitors are up to. How to keep your finger on the pulse?
- Monitor your competitors’ positions to look into their SEO strategy using tools like SE Ranking. Moreover, there can pick your competitors in case you don’t have a ready-made list.
- Discover your competitors’ keywords and ads for paid and organic search. To simplify the job use the Competitor SEO/PPC research tool on SE Ranking platform.
7. Build backlinks thoughtfully.
It’s no secret that to be any good, links have to be thematically relevant and legit. If they come from an irrelevant page or site, they won’t help you with rankings. That’s why we strongly recommend analyzing your backlinks. Check all possible errors that can be there – broken links, 404 errors, spam anchors etc.
With SE Ranking backlinks explorer and analysis tool you can easily find all the backlinks for every domain, and then get 15 SEO parameters to each of them. It’s always important to stay in complete control over your major off-site optimization factors.
8. Be unique, especially in titles and descriptions.
The titles of your pages should be unique because the same titles can be indexed as duplicates. The descriptions should be different from each other and attractive as they appear in the SERP.
Also, we recommend using keywords in URLs so the users and the search engine crawlers know what your page is about.
9. Social media does help SEO, but not the way you think.
How does social media help improve rankings? They do indirectly. Social networks are all about visibility, not rankings. You post content on social media sites and its coverage allows you to get links and mentions that will improve your ranking positions afterward.
Actually, Google doesn’t pass any link authority from social links, but if your article is shared directly from your site, it sends a social signal to search engine. However, more people will see your content, and that means you will have more chances to get a really good backlink.
That’s why it’s crucial to stay active on social media. With SE Ranking SMM tool you can be in control of your social communications with scheduled posting and monitoring tools without a need to switch from SEO platform to other auto posting services.
10. A good marketing plan can be a startup’s survival kit.
Have you already analyzed the content in your niche? What about breadcrumbs, robots.txt and Alt tags? Well, you might not be an SEO or marketing expert but you should know what’s going on around your website.
That’s why we have developed this comprehensive guide that offers valuable tips based on your site analysis. You can follow all the recommendations, explore additional sources we offer and add your own task to keep everything in one place.
If you build a startup, you will need plenty of patience. This includes doing SEO as well. Search engine optimization is a long-term project that requires constant attention no matter where you are in your business journey.
After all, search engine optimization can become one of the best traffic channels for your startup, no matter what your budget is or what type of product you sell. So, if you’re looking for an affordable Moz alternative that will help your startup grow, we hope you’ll check us out.
Editor’s Note: This article is part of the startup tools blog series Grow Your Business brought to you by the marketing team at UniTel Voice, the virtual phone system priced and designed for startups and small business owners.
