Why Startups Badly Need SEO

We live in a world where it has become a must for businesses to have a presence online. While some entrepreneurs settle for promoting their business on social media, most companies still choose to create and run a website, and to make it their face on the Internet. After all, a website is still the best way to generate business online; most consumers these days won’t even consider a website-less business.

However, just having a website will never be enough to help a business achieve its goals. Before it can do anything of the sort, people must know that the website and the company it represents exist. That’s where SEO comes in.

SEO or search engine optimization has been around for a couple of decades or so, but it’s only in recent years that entrepreneurs at large have warmed up to it and recognized how potent it is as a business tool.

Businesses big and small have benefited from SEO, which has, in many ways, leveled the playing field. Even startups that have invested in the creation of a website can use a much-needed boost from a well-conceived and executed optimization strategy.

Come to think of it: startups actually need SEO solutions badly. Here are some reasons why that is the case.

Better visibility

The only way for a website to make its existence known to the world is to make itself more visible online, and the best way to get other people to spot your site more easily is through SEO.

SEO is a collection of techniques that webmasters use to get higher rankings in the search results of Google and other search engines. Higher rankings lead to better visibility, which, in turn, increases the probability that users will check out a website.

Improved traffic and more leads and conversions

When we get to search engine results pages (SERPs) after typing specific keywords, which results do we choose to click first? Of course, our eyes always find their way to the ones at the top of the page.

With SEO, a startup’s website stands the chance of getting to the top of SERPs and getting clicked by more people. More clicks mean increased organic traffic, and more people checking out your website means a higher potential for generating leads and, eventually, conversions.

Sure, it may take time because there’s no such thing as instant SEO results, but as long as a startup is running a sound SEO strategy, they will get to the top of the SERPs for specific keywords eventually.

Indifference to search results beyond page 1

When a website doesn’t do SEO, it cannot expect any of its pages to make it to the first page of search results, much less the top of Page 1. Worse, people aren’t likely to check out SERPs beyond Page 1.

If you’re a startup and you don’t make any effort at optimizing your website, you are going to have a hard time introducing yourself to potential customers who use search engines to look for what they want or need. Your business may be offering what search engine users are looking for, but they’re not going to see you, not without any effort at optimization on your part.

Customer behavior data from SEO

To be fair, even big businesses can use the customer behavior data that SEO can help accumulate over time. Startups, however, have a more dire need for that information, for the simple fact that they don’t have much in the way of data on potential customers.

When a startup does SEO, it will be using SEO tools that will show them important user behavior data such as the words they typically use when doing searches or which pages get the most visits from target customer audiences.

The data that SEO helps discover is quite significant, and it’s something that businesses, startups, in particular, can benefit from for a long time. It can, for instance, help inform their business decisions. They can apply the data they get from analytics tools to their overall business strategy.  All that information will help them, say, create targeted content for the twentysomething subset of their audience.

Cost-effectiveness

One thing that most, if not all, startups have in common is that they don’t have unlimited resources. Because of limited funds—especially for marketing—startups badly need SEO, which happens to be one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies ever.

Unlike costlier traditional marketing techniques like advertising on TV, SEO is more targeted, as their campaigns are geared towards users who are actively scouring the Internet for products and services they need or want.

And while many businesses call for professional backup in the form of SEO firms, startups can actually opt to do their SEO in-house and make use of free SEO tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

It’s absolutely crucial for startups to build a presence online, and SEO can, without a doubt, help them do that. And as mentioned above, you can do your own SEO, or you can enlist the help of a reliable SEO company to improve online visibility—and all the things that come with it—for your business.