Startups and SEO – Why it’s good for them

October 23, 2012

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It’s a startup… I want to cut down on my overheads…. I can’t hire an SEO company right now….. I don’t need it…. I am sure I can get the kind of clients I want without SEO… and so on and so forth…. These are just some of the reasons that come up in people’s minds when their business is just starting out.

I am sure every startup owner, has his/her reasons for avoiding the use of an SEO expert, but there are plenty more reasons that justify using the services of SEO professionals for improving the organic SEO results of your business, provided it has a website (yes, don’t faint when I says this, but there are businesses out there who still don’t have their websites…. Good luck to them).

So, without wasting any time, let’s take a look at some of many reasons that will make you want to use SEO, if you have a startup.

Building Outreach

What’s the first thing that you must do to ensure your business profitability; in case of startups it is reaching out to your audience. Yes, and to do that you need to use many different avenues, one of them being SEO.  It helps you reach out to people who are thinking of using the kind of services that you are offering. It’s just that you don’t know them yet. The use of SEO specifically helps you know who they are and what they want. Essentially, it’s a two way street. You get introduced to your clientele, and they get introduced to you.

Helps you Develop Early Influence

There is a saturated market there. You can’t take it for granted. You might be offering the best services on the planet and believe your services will help you own your particular niche, but your confidence, or shall we say, overconfidence will come crashing down once you actually get your  startup, up and running. You will realize that making an impression on your target audience is tough and many a times you have to be prepared for the long haul if you want to succeed.

As can be imagined, a long haul, without a lot of dividends, is not going to be good news for you, as a startup owner. One of the ways that you can get round this fact is by implementing a range of SEO techniques that will help you influence your audience in more ways than one.

A large part of SEO is about quality link building and by getting inbound links from authoritative sources you are setting yourself up as a credible service provider that can be trusted.

Helps you take Startup Predators…. Full On

There are some big boys out there, who are just waiting to gobble your business up. The how is not important, but you must understand the Why? They don’t want you to succeed, because your success is quite obviously a deterrent to their success. Your target audience might be a part of their target audience, and you might be eating into their revenues. Nobody is going to enjoy that right!!…. These businesses have endless revenue stream and make huge profits. Their marketing mix is configured to ensure that startups like you don’t intrude upon their turf.

You might not be able to compete component for component, when it comes to their marketing mix. But, there is one aspect of their marketing that you can take head on, and that is SEO. Remember, your business is small, so its agile… it’s a start up means you can be creative and you have that much more maneuverability. You can use that to your advantage while devising an SEO strategy for your business.

  • Press Release Distribution
  • Content Marketing
  • Guest Blogging
  • Social Media Marketing
  • Infographics Marketing

….. And many more!!!

Yes, what I have enlisted are just some of the many elements of an SEO strategy. You can use them all to create your own Molotov cocktail of an SEO and throw it at your competitors. What’s more, you will be taking them on their own turf and if you do it right, you can ensure that you can go one up over them.

It complements your business growth Strategy

You might already have a marketing plan in place to promote your business and its products and services, but SEO can act as catalyst for your growth. What’s more it can be seamlessly integrated to fit any and every marketing plan of your business. What this means is that you don’t need to make wholesale changes to your business plan, if you are implementing SEO. Another thing that is in its favor is that it can be deployed easily and if you have got the SEO mix right, you don’t really have to make changes to it. All you need to do is keep monitoring its results.

In Conclusion

I realize that startups might see SEO as a kind of luxury that they might not want to invest in, when they are just starting out. Doubts are a good thing; if you don’t have doubts, you won’t take the time out to clear your thinking. I am sure after you go through the reasons given above, you will be partly convinced to go for SEO, but don’t take my word for it. Go through its ins and outs and check whether it’s going to really be beneficial for you or not. Focus on the ROI and if you think it’s worth it, just go for it. But, if you have doubts, keep getting a clearer idea of how SEO can work for your start up and only then go ahead with it.

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About Pratik Dholakiya

Pratik Dholakiya is the founder of Growfusely, an SEO and content marketing agency. Pratik has contributed on sites like Moz, Fast Company, Social Media Examiner, KISSmetrics, and Content Marketing Institute to name a few. He's a "must-follow" SEO expert according to Search Engine Watch and has been named one of the top content marketing influencers by Onalytica. He's passionate about fitness, entrepreneurship, start-ups, and all things digital marketing. Hit him up on Twitter @DholakiyaPratik for a quick chat on any of these topics.