Woohoo!
You made it.
Your IT startup is, well…up and running! Congrats! Build, and they’ll come.
Did anyone tell you this? Not so fast!
Starting an IT business is one thing; making it successful, however, is something entirely different. Listen to this…
Thousands of IT startups pop up every year. Put differently; you’re up against some stiff competition, so you better get your game on the right from the start.
Even so, the Information Technology market will reach a staggering $5 trillion by 2021. In essence, this means there’s lots of revenue for companies that go the extra mile to stay ahead of the curve.
One of the absolute must-haves for an IT startup is a well-optimized website. After all, a significant percentage of your target customers reside online.
Not to worry…
At Growth Generators, we’re all about helping you find success with SEO, whether you’re an IT startup with a huge budget or one on a budget. What follows is a rundown of SEO fundamentals to start and grow your Information Technology business.
Make SEO Tools Your Friend
This is where it all starts.
Sure, that may sound pretty obvious, but we’ve come across business owners who ignore SEO tools in our line of work as digital marketers.
And guess what?
You don’t even have to spend a dime on SEO tools. There’s an assortment of free SEO tools that work. These include:
This one will come in handy if you want to get insights on what landing pages and queries are “killing it” in the SERPs. Plus, all you need to know about your website’s performance is to keep an eye on Google Analytics.
Also Read: Digital Marketing Vs. Traditional Marketing
Google Webmaster Tool
Oh, this one changed its name recently. It now goes by the name Google Search Tool. The powerful suite gives you crucial data such as page-speed insights, ad experience report, URL errors, and much more.
SEMRush – This tool allows you to keep tabs on your website and that of your competitors. Now, competitor analysis is a core component of your marketing strategy as an IT startup.
SEMRush allows you to see the number of people visiting your competitor’s website, a chart of the keywords they’re ranking for, and info on matching their keywords.
Other SEO tools for IT startups include;
Moz
Ahref
Start A Blog With Long-tail Keywords
43 percent of business owners don’t know what blogging is, and you’d expect, they don’t blog for their businesses.
Shocking, right?
Don’t be part of this disturbing statistic. We’re in the age of online marketing, and you don’t want to miss out on any chance to close a sale or get a new customer.
Here’s something else about blogging that you need to know.
55 percent of entrepreneur startups that use blogging as their top inbound marketing tactic report a positive ROI on their business. While the benefits of blogging for business are undeniable, you have to do it right, especially when you’re trying to create brand awareness.
At Growth Generators, we recommend that you build your blog around long-tail keywords for SEO reasons.
Why?
Well, because long-tail keywords provide detailed insights into what your target audience is looking for. That way, you can create a comprehensive blog post covering a host of other keywords relating to your primary keyword.
Think of it as a strategy to help you develop curated content that answers your target audience’s pain points.
Reach Out To Experts For Roundup Posts
Have you ever heard of EAT?
If you haven’t, that’s an acronym for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. And, Yes, EAT matters.
You see,
To propel your IT startup high in SERPs, you must develop your brand in a way that portrays its expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.
How do you nurture EAT?
It comes down to creating content that shows you know what you’re talking about.
On the flipside, creating good, authoritative content is an art. It requires both expertise and experience.
One of the easiest ways to generate content with EAT wrote all around it is to produce expert roundup posts.
Here’s how it works.
You’ll bring together several experts in your industry, ask them questions, and include their answers in your post. We advocate expert roundup posts for a couple of reasons;
It shows your genuine desire to help your audience.
Many experts are willing to share their knowledge. However, it can be somewhat intimidating for people to ask for help from a bigwig.
It is an excellent strategy to earn high-quality backlinks for your website.
You must be thinking… I’m a startup; how do I convince experts to share their nuggets of wisdom with my audience?
Here’s how:
Find experts who have contributed to a roundup post before. You can, for instance, search for “IT expert + roundup” on Google.
Build a list of ten to twenty experts
Reach out to them and ask to interview them
You can rope in the expert by including some of their quotes in a social media platform, website, etc.
Remember to notify the expert when the post is live to see if you can get the person to share your post.
Link-building: Link Out To Sites With High Domain Authority
You need to have a solid link-building strategy. Yes, you do.
Consider the following link-building stats.
Google uses links as one of the top two criteria to rank pages.
SEO experts say external linking is the third most important factor for SEO.
92 percent of marketers believe links will remain a crucial ranking factor in the next five years.
42 percent of SEOs spend a significant time building internal and external links
46 percent of marketers spend $10,000 or more every year on link-building.
Numbers don’t lie. neither does the search volumes and if you want to build a thriving IT startup through SEO, link-building must be the center of your growth strategy.
Still, you have to acquire links that matter. Aim for links from high DA sites.
Here’s how it works.
The more links from high authority sites pointing to your website, the more Google believes you have high-quality content.
Indeed, there’s every chance you’re already aware of this. What you may not know, however, is that this link-building works in reverse.
Here’s what we mean.
When Google is analyzing the authority of your pages, it looks at inbound and outbound links. Why?
Because lots of outbound links indicate that your pages are rich with information. The point we’re trying to make here is that even though acquiring hire quality backlinks is good, giving out links to other pages is also helpful for IT startup SEO.
We recommend that you link to websites with a DA of 40 or higher. You can use the Moz Open Site Explorer tool to check a site’s DA. One more thing; you can use Alltop to unearth high-quality themes to link out to.
Learn About Schema Markup
Schema what? Schema markup!
That sounds like a complicated formula out of a chemistry class, right? It sure does, but don’t let the jargon scare you. For starters, schema markup is a type of structured data. Its primary purpose is to make it easier for search engine bots to crawl and, most important, index your content.
Why do you need to use schema markup?
As an IT startup, you want potential clients to know about you and what you do as quickly as possible. If you don’t use structured data on your website, search engines will not know what your site is all about.
However, with schema markup, bots will understand why you created the website and its content. In other words, schema markup ticks all the boxes bots need to look at to figure out what is on your website. That way, your content gets indexed quickly.
How do you add schema to your website? The process is straightforward, but it can take some time if you’re doing it for the first time.
Even so, you can use tools such as Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper or Schema App Structured Data plugin if your website is running on WordPress.
Look For User-generated Keywords
Sure, we talked about keywords earlier and how it is ideal for targeting long-tail keywords.
However, the truth is, keyword research isn’t the easiest of things to do. In fact, many startups struggle to find the right target keyword.
But, you don’t have to rely on trial and error to hack it. You can get valuable keywords from guess who … the people visiting your website. How cool is that!
What are user-generated keywords?
These are the terms that people are looking up using the search bar on your website.
Your target audience uses the bar to find what they’re looking for, but on the flip side, that translates to free keywords.
Let’s say you’re a B2B software startup. A visitor comes to your site and searches for an “electronic invoicing provider.” Bam! That’s a keyword right there!
And the beauty of it is that you don’t have to guess if your target audience is using the keyword. You KNOW that they are.
You can even decide to create content based on these keywords. Creating a search bar is easy. Most themes come with a built-in bar. There are also other tools such as a keyword research tool that’ll assist you with popular keywords!
Produce High-Quality Content And Include Infographics
We saved our favorite SEO tip for IT startups for last. You need to generate high-quality content if you want your target audience to take you seriously. And we’re not talking about the same old regurgitated stuff.
We’re referring to well-research, helpful content geared toward taking your potential customers through the value journey.
We’re talking about content that will inform your audience while at the same time convincing them that your brand offers the best solution for their problems.
Invest in a well-thought-out content marketing strategy. After all, 64 percent of marketers want to learn how to improve their content strategy, according to MarketingProfs.
And as a rule of thumb, get an experienced writer to churn out the content for you if you don’t have the time or can’t write. We recommend that you hire a writer who specializes in your niches instead of going for a generalist. That way, you can be sure that the person has an in-depth understanding of the industry and the latest trends.
What’s more?
Include infographics in your content. Why? … because people generally process visual data faster than text. According to Backlinko, infographics receive 25.8 percent more links compared to “how-to” posts and videos. Moreover,
65 percent of content marketers publish visuals at least two times every week.
Infographics are the fourth most used form of content marketing.
Readers following directions with illustrations and text do 323 percent better than those following directions with no images.
30 percent of potential customers are more likely to purchase when prompted by visuals.
The point is, customize your content as much as possible to make customers find it helpful.
Remember, 78 percent of CMOs believe that custom content (such as infographics) is the future of content marketing.
The Bottom Line
Growing an IT startup to a profitable outfit can be challenging if you don’t get the basics correct from the get-go and align the business goals with the growth goals.
Even then, your startup doesn’t have to be a failure if you plan your actions and execute them well.
These SEO tips for IT startups are practical and easy to implement even when you don’t have prior knowledge about how search engine optimization works. We hope this content checklist was useful and create a definitive guide towards your goals!
Need More Help With SEO?
Yes, we understand that you may not have the time to work on your IT startup’s SEO bit.
Don’t fret. Growth Generators specializes in helping business owners as you get started with SEO.
Boasting years of hands-on experience, we will craft a tailor-made plan SEO strategy based on your business and model type. You will work with one of our SEO experts to ensure that every tactic delivers the expected results.
What do you need to do? Contact us today to connect with one of our SEOs. With Growth Generators by your side, your IT startup will, without a doubt, take off on the right footing!
Comments