If you haven’t heard of Priceonomics, you should definitely check it out. Priceonomics is a tremendous new tech startup that scrapes the web to give you the ultimate price guide to any product you want. (In just a few months, they’ve added 130 million products to their site. More coming..)
The folks over at Priceonomics have an interesting post on the need for tech startups to pursue “Minimum Viable SEO.” Minimum Viable SEO is a great way to approach SEO for your business, whether you’re a tech startup or a 50-year old plumbing company.
As post explains, many companies–especially new or smaller ones–are kind of intimidated by SEO because it’s pretty technical and requires years of expertise to master. But, that doesn’t mean you should just ignore SEO.
We recommend this post because a lot of non-tech people come to us and think that because they aren’t programmers or web designers they should just give up on SEO. Well, this Priceonomic blog post proves that even uber-technical people can be intimidated by SEO.
But don’t be. Sure, SEO is a deep ocean with many, many factors. But some SEO is way better than none. It gives you something to build on.
So if you’re thinking about using SEO to get your business found online, remember to start with 3 simple things.
1. Content. Use the Google Keywords Tool Box to find the keywords that people are using to search for your products/services. Then use those keywords as naturally on your website as possible. Start with your homepage, by far the most import page on your site. If possible, create a WordPress blog, integrate on your site and try to blog at least 1/week. The search engines love keyword-rich, unique and fresh content.
But don’t keyword stuff. Google wants your site to have natural content that actually appeals to your audience. The good news is that you probably already created your site to do this. So just make sure you sprinkle the keywords in the natural content.
2. Onsite Meta Content. This may seem really technical. Don’t fret. Talk to your webmaster, IT person or whomever put your site together. Ask him/her to insert your chosen keywords in the meta content on your site. This helps the search engine crawlers read your site’s code according and see you as a relevant website for your products/services.
3. Linking. This is the hardest thing to do if you don’t have an SEO consultant or too much SEO knowledge. Simply put, you need a variety of links to get your website ranking well. Most companies (like ours) have a powerful link-building service that generates link to drive rankings. Before you sign up with any SEO, do your homework to make sure you’re signing up with a reputable company.
If you’re not sure you want to invest in link-building campaign just yet, make sure you are doing as much leg-work to promote your brand. This means blogging often, posting to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn (if you’re a B2B).
Content, Onsite and Linking are the 3 pillars of SEO. SEO is constantly evolving and required a lot of knowledge to become a master, but if you stick to these 3 things you can definitely get started right away and build your Minimum Viable SEO.