SEO Practices For Startups: Transform Your Business In 2023

by Gaurav Sharma

One important marketing strategy that every startup should utilize on a regular basis is SEO practices.

Most people who find information online find it through organic search, not through social media marketing and paid search.

This not only scales your SEO, but also requires proactive SEO practices to maintain conversions.

Growing a small business means consistently reaching this number of people with potential leads. If you rank high on search engines, 53% of online users will see your business.

The more leads you have, the more likely you are to convert. So, as a marketer or small business owner, here are some SEO practices you should look into on a regular basis:

CONTINUOUSLY UPDATED CONTENT

Continuing to create new content is great. But did you know that you can get the same SEO boost by updating your existing content?

Most search engines, including Google, are constantly looking for new content. And fresh doesn’t necessarily mean new. Content is considered up-to-date as long as it is updated.

SEO crawlers love fresh content. Thus, updated and new content increases your site’s chances at higher SEO rankings and increased traffic.

Updating content includes ensuring content is always updated. This includes both timeliness and relevance. Information that is not current may be irrelevant, and irrelevant content loses value over time along with rankings.

Content update can also mean:

  • Improve and enrich existing content. This can include adding tables, images, and videos to make your posts richer. You can also reorganize your posts to look and sound better.

  • Improve the accuracy of your content. This may include editing for grammar or fact checking.

  • Re-optimize your keywords. Your post may have been ranked for certain keywords when it was last updated, but don’t stop there. You can always find higher-ranking keywords and add them to your content.

  • Use ideas from an existing blog to create new post content and use it as a guest post on another website.

These all lead to higher click-through rates for your website, and that’s what organic traffic and SEO rankings are all about.

Search engines change their algorithms and rules from time to time. Updating your content is therefore one way to keep up with these changes.

Test page experience scores regularly

One of the most important SEO practices is optimizing your pages for user experience. You don’t have to wait until your bounce rate peaks to check your website’s functionality.

There are several metrics you can use to test the user experience of your website. In the Core Web Vitals program, Google has provided unified guidelines for determining the general health of your website.

Whether you’re a marketer or business owner, these guidelines are essential to the success of any website. The metrics we consider basic for all websites are:

  • loading speed

  • Interaction

  • visual stability

Here is the picture.

via image web.developer

If your page loads fast, your bounce rate will increase and your conversion rate will decrease. According to Portent’s research, the ideal load times for conversion rates are between 0 and 4 seconds.

Here is a brief summary of their analysis.

Image via Portent

When it comes to interactivity, it means the first experience a user has with your website as soon as they find the URL.

Website visual stability includes:

  • How Mobile-Friendly Your Website Is

  • Security of your website. For example, the site must be secured with HTTPS and free of malware.

  • Minimal pop-ups to disturb your site visitors.

In addition to these key factors, businesses have unique customer experience metrics based on the nature of their operations.

For example, you can integrate a live chat tool into your website to instantly respond to customer queries.

Any marketer or small business owner should know what these metrics are.

the simple way is Customer needs analysis. This way, you can configure your website to provide the best possible customer experience.

Check for 3xx/4xx errors

Errors and site redirects affect your page’s overall traffic.

Constantly checking and fixing broken links and website errors to a minimum is one SEO practice that every marketer should adopt.

But what exactly are these errors?. you can ask

4xx errors occur when a site is restricted, non-existent, or unreachable.

This could be because the link is broken or the URL is misspelled or misspelled. Examples of 4xx errors include:

  • 400 Bad Request: This can happen if you make a bad website request or if your request is corrupted.

  • 404 Not Found: This error occurs when the target website has been removed from public view.

  • 404 Forbidden: Occurs when the requested website is strictly prohibited for a specific audience.

These appear below.

via image blue frontier

3xx codes redirect users to another page or resource.

The user must take action to fulfill a specific request. For example, these errors may include redirects to temporary websites or new domains.

Here is an example.

  • 301 code: Occurs when a website permanently moves its content to a new domain. Any user requesting the old page here will be redirected to the new domain.

  • 302 code: Occurs when the website is temporarily moved to another domain.

  • 300 code: This redirects the user to multiple pages, giving them the option to choose which page to proceed.

Here’s why checking for 4xx errors and updating your 3xx code is an important SEO practice:

It helps to identify and fix internal and external broken links. A broken link is a link that has been changed or removed.

They harm your website’s credibility.

As a business, unreachable links make your website and brand appear unestablished. Search engines love trusted and established sites.

Broken links also prevent search engine crawlers from indexing your site.

How do I track these links?

You can track broken links using Google Webmaster Tools. Just go to the Google Search Console and look for crawl errors. This will help determine the cause of the crawl error and fix the link. to improve internal connection If you find a broken link, you can use a tool to help suggest related internal links you can use.

By constantly checking for broken links, you can track how much traffic is being lost. You can use an application like Google Analytics for this.

3xx codes allow you to fix broken URLs with permanent redirects and maintain your SEO ranking.

Closing the backlink gap

Building external backlinks is one of the most valuable SEO methods for top websites.

But quality isn’t as important as the number of backlinks you build.

When calculating your backlink spacing, it’s important to make sure your links are valuable. Valuable backlinks can come from guest blogs, webinars, free tools, guest author bios, and acknowledgments from other sites.

The backlink gap is the amount of referring domains your site has compared to your competitors.

Determining the value of a referrer domain depends on several factors.

  • Websites must have a domain rating (DR) higher than 50.

  • Your reference domain’s track record of growth should be gradual, not exploding.

  • A reference website should have a blog section that posts high-quality content.

  • The referring domain should be related to your niche.

You can use SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush to monitor your backlink value and calculate your backlink spacing. at rock

After determining your backlinks along with their value, compare them to the sites you want to rank higher. Your report should look like this:

via image Ahrefs

You can use this information to apply the following SEO practices to close your backlink gap.

  • As we emphasized, focus on the quality of your backlinks.

  • Build links to startup SaaS websites that have a solid track record of DR growth.

  • Focus on backlinks from pages with lots of valuable links. They can be competitive, but their SEO impact is huge.

Find and test long-tail keywords

Short keywords are usually highly competitive and difficult to rank for. So, another one of the many SEO practices marketers should focus on is finding the long-tail keywords that set them apart.

It is longer and more detailed.

Here’s a starting point for finding these words on Google.

  • Google autocomplete suggestions in the search box

LSI keyword

image via google

  • The ‘People Ask’ section.

image via google

  • The “Related Searches” section at the bottom of the page.

image via google

However, these are rarely accurate, and SEO tools like Wordtracker, Semrush, and HubSpot are more effective.

Another way is to phrase your keywords as questions, given that most users search for information online in the form of questions.

It also helps you add details to your keywords like size, color and position.

When testing long-tail keywords, you should research what your competitors rank highly for. Then you know what works and you move towards it.

GMB list and NAP updates

Google My Business (GMB) listings are important for startup businesses because they help them appear in local searches.

GMB is how Google displays businesses in a specific area and information such as name, address, phone number (NAP), and industry.

Optimizing your GMB and updating your NAP information will increase your business ranking. Shown as a business on Google Maps as well as Google Search.

For startups, showing up in searches can be challenging. These SEO practices will give your business the local SEO boost it needs.

Searches like “nearest restaurant” or “nearest gas station” are especially common on Google Maps.

Most people also look for services online. In this case, the only results Google can pull are business listings or websites that provide relevant information.

If your GMB listings and NAPs are up to date, search engines are more likely to pick up items relevant to your search. This exposes your business to more traffic.

Google search engine also picks up updated GMB listings and new listings that provide SEO improvements.

GMB listings are free and easy to use, making it easy for customers to identify your business.

NAP updates ensure that addresses and contacts are always correct, which increases trust.

Customers may be disappointed if they find the wrong address or call the wrong number. You will need to make these updates if you move your business to a new location or change your phone number.

Here is an example of a Google My Business listing.

GMB

via image google search

Time to Be Proactive with SEO Practices

The SEO examples discussed above are just a few of many that you can regularly use in your digital marketing strategy.

As a startup, maintaining your SEO rating is better than mitigating losses from organic search conversion failures.

As a marketer or small business owner, being proactive can save you time and increase conversion rates. Actively promote your business on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

what else? You don’t need developer-level technical knowledge to apply these tips.

The key is to maintain your website and have quality, up-to-date content both internally and externally.