Are you launching a new website for your startup? Are you worried about your online presence?
If you are an online marketer, then probably you have already figured out the SEO basics. In this post, I will be sharing a few tips (based on Google recommendations) on how to improve your startup ranking on Google search. I hope it will be helpful for the startup founders. Let’s get started.
Domain Name:
Starting a new company? Have you already decided your name? Think twice. Keep your startup’s name simple as possible. Check whether that domain name is available? If you are starting a new startup and the domain name is not available, then please consider changing the name of your startup.
www or non-www:
Decide whether you want to use a naked domain for your website or the www version. Then, use 301 (permanent redirect) to your www or non-www version. For example, I’m using the non-www version on this blog.
Add Your Site to Search Console:
Verify your ownership by adding your site to search console (previously webmaster tools), from where you can control your website on how to appear in search. You can also identify the site issues and get recommendations from Google. Once you launch your site, don’t forget to add a sitemap.xml and robots.txt in search console that tells Google and other search bots about your website and content. You can also get the search analytics keywords data in search console; that helps you to make smart decisions.
Install Google Analytics:
Include Google Analytics code on your website and start collecting data even if you’re not ready to use it. Once, you launch the site; you will get an idea about your most visited pages, and sources that are bringing the traffic to your site. Connect your Google Analytics to Search Console so that you can feed data from search console to analytics. Once your site is ready, do not forget to define your conversion. Conversion can be anything; from a button click to subscribing blog, filling up a contact form or buying a product.
Smart Copy:
I am not going to write about Keywords research here; we’ve already covered it in our previous blog-post SEO Process. When you are writing a copy make sure, you are writing for humans and not for the search engines. But include the relevant keywords naturally in your text. These keywords are like the ‘query terms’ that normal people use to search for your product/business.
Every Page Should Include:
- Unique Topic (Heading Tags)
- Unique Title (Displays in search results)
- Unique Meta Description for the snippet
- Keywords in the filename (eg. image name), lowercase, and hyphen separated
- Descriptive anchor text for every link
Google had released a video ‘SEO for startups in under 10 minutes’ in 2012 that provides startup tips on how to master search engine optimization in just 10 minutes. Google has changed their search algorithms many times, but all those Google SEO tips still work in 2017. Watch it!