Practical SEO Guide for Startups to Boost Growth

This step-by-step SEO guide for startups provides you with a structured approach to improve your search engine rankings, drive organic traffic, and support your startup's growth and scale-up. This practical SEO guide covers essential aspects of its implementation, including keyword research, on-page and tech SEO for startups, content creation, and link building. By following the incremental steps outlined, startups can effectively enhance their organic traffic and boost revenue.

SEO GUIDE: Semantic Core

● Analyse current organic traffic and rankings: Audit current site organic traffic, identify top landing pages, rank pages, identify quick wins.● Cluster website pages by user type.● Cluster and prioritise website pages by top search results in GSC (Google Search Console): landing pages (general search keys), navigating, informational (typical and blog lead magnets), conversion, transactional, sub/category, and service/product pages.● Develop a semantic core for each user type/product to avoid cannibalisation: ● Identify and conduct localised research of core topics and short, medium, and long-tail keywords (use VPN service or Geo Clever Fixed add-on for Chrome). ● Conduct intent analysis and cluster keywords by informational and commercial (conversion, transactional, selling). ● Conduct competitor analysis: Identify top-10 SERP competitors by priority keywords, analyse them by trust and semantic parameters (i.e. website age, indexation, visibility, spam rate, backlinks, load speed, adaptability, positions (traffic, CTRs, search returns), brand mentions, awareness).● Evaluate and cluster keywords based on search volume (high, medium, and low frequency – HF, MF, and LF respectively), competition, and relevance. ● Allocate keywords among prioritised pages (60%, 20%, and 20% for HF, MF, and LF keywords respectively for each page).

SEO GUIDE: Quick wins 1

1. Set up Meta-Robots to close for indexation of a cart, user registration and user authentication pages, filters, private user profiles (not public pages), purchase flow pages, and admin pages.2. Create and place Robot.txt at the root of the website to close for indexation of low-quality pages including those closed by Meta-Robots. For already indexed pages, close them only in Meta-Robots. 3. Set up sitemaps (Sitemap.xml) for texts, images, video, and audio at the root of the website for better and faster indexation.4. Determine the primary domain for the site (with 'www.' or without it) and set up a 301 redirect.5. Prompt sitemaps indexation in Google Search Console.6. Fix 3xx, 4xx, 5xx redirects.

SEO GUIDE: Quick wins 2

● Optimize the depth of nesting to a maximum of two slashes in the browser address bar applying 301 redirects for new pages where necessary.● Fix missing and duplicate Titles (have 8-9 words, unique for the site and web, contain HF keywords, don’t have ‘.’, contain 2-3 special symbols).● Fix broken images.● Fix/delete broken links.● Fix missing and duplicate Descriptions (have 14-16 words, contain HF keywords, unique for the site and web, don’t have spamminess, contain 2-3 special symbols, have ‘Strong’ for keywords, have rich snippets for navigation and commercial pages).● Close duplicate pages using rel=‘canonical’ tag.● Close external links using rel=’nofollow’ or ‘noindex’ tag.● Fix pages without HTTPS.● Set up a generation of page addresses according to the principles of SEF URLs.● Ensure that the site does not generate session variables in the page address.

SEO GUIDE: Quick wins 3

● Fix too long and too short Titles.● Fix too long and too short Descriptions.● Fix missing and duplicate H1s (have up to 5 words, contain HF keywords, used once on the page, unique for the page, at the top of the page, non-commercial, written with tags <h1> … </h1>).● Fix too long and too short H1s.● Fix images with empty ‘alt’ tags.● Fix too heavy images.● Fix pages with HTTPS issues.● Fix H1s duplicating Titles.● Fix multiple H1s on the same page (max one per page).● Fix ‘iframe’ tags.● Fix schema.org layouts (FAQ page, stars, map, additional links).

SEO GUIDE: Mid-term plays 1

● Simplify URL paths and optimize URL keywords, use 301 redirects for changed URLs.● Check and fix the texts for keyword stuffing, wateriness, uniqueness (minimum 90%), duplications, shingle test (5), and spamminess.● Fix the H1 > H2 > H3 hierarchy.● Fix/add 2-3 H2(H3) per 350-400 words (have up to 7 words, contain HF, MF, and LF keywords, can contain commercial keywords, written with tags <h2(h3)> … </h2(h3)>).● Optimise/add numbered and bulleted lists as much as possible using ‘<oll> / <li>text</li> / <li>text</li> / </oll>’ and ‘<ul> / <li>text</li> / <li>text</li> / </ul’ respectively.● Delete/leave meta-tags ‘Keywords’ empty to minimise spamminess.● Edit paragraphs using <p> … </p>.● Apply tags ‘Strong’ or ‘b’ 1-2 times per 350-400 words to emphasise keywords (<Strong> … </Strong> or <b> … </b>).● Optimise texts using 2 images per 350-400 words. ● Make all images unique (check through Google search): ● Optimise images using 4-5 words for ‘Alt’ with HF, MF, or LF keywords, and using 5-7 words for ’Title’ (different from ‘Alt’) with a file name and HF, MF, or LF keywords. ● Fix/ensure the uniqueness of images (checked through Google search): mirror, convert to black and white, adjust brightness/contrast, tilt, and/or crop at least 20%.● Boost page indexation using the command ‘add url’ in GSC.● Delete unnecessary meta-tags ‘noindex’ and ‘nofollow’.

SEO GUIDE: Mid-term plays 2

● Create the interlinking map: each page should have at least one internal text link leading to it, with a maximum of 100 links in total leading to key pages, no more than one link from key pages, and avoid creating dead-end pages.Implement the interlinking map.● Block the crawler from accessing the other menu links to ensure the full effect of internal weight transfer to key pages.Optimise links using tag <a>…</a>. ● Optimise anchor links: conciliate with the text context, make unique duplicate links leading to the same pages, and place them as much at the top of the page as possible.● Optimise non-anchor links writing them into images.● Optimise internal links: should open in the same tab, ensure that canonical links are tagged with ‘noindex’ or ‘nofollow’ meta-tag, delete ‘noindex’ or ‘nofollow’ tags where necessary.● Optimise external links: should open in a new tab, apply ‘noindex’ or ‘nofollow’ tags, and place them as much at the bottom of the page as possible.● Add internal cross-linking on informational pages - include a paragraph with links to a series of logically related pages, for example, through the content of a resources section or relevant articles.

SEO GUIDE: Mid-term plays 3

● Optimise multimedia content: add videos, images, and graphics for the existing content.● Implement all requirements stated in Increments 1-6 for the optimised multimedia content.● Conduct competitor analysis to identify the content gap: identify pages thin on content and missing content to optimize page word counts based on keywords.● Redevelop thin on content pages.● Implement all requirements stated in Increments 1-6 for the enriched thin content.● Claim and optimize Google My Business.● Add website on Google Maps.

SEO GUIDE: Long-term plays

● Cluster topics for new missing content, develop content architecture, and group in themes/pillars.● Create new content requirements using keywords and formatting guidelines.● Create the interlinking map for new content.● Create and upload new pillar content.● Implement the interlinking map.● Conduct backlink audit, gap, and benchmark analysis.● Create a backlink increase strategy.● Implement a backlink increase strategy.

1. Google Search Console (GSC).
2. Google Mobile Friendly.
3. Google Speed Check.
4. Pingdom.com for end-user performance testing.
5. Istio.com for text spamminess check.
6. Advego app for text uniqueness check.
7. Schema.org for layouts and rich snippets.
8. Semrush for tech SEO audit, competitor analysis, on-page and off-page SEO research, and content optimisation.