Seo for Startups - 5 Ways to Use Brains Over Budget by @CanIRank

SEO FOR
STARTUPS –
5 Ways to Use
Brains Over Budget

“SEO is a strategy...If you’re just thinking in
terms of keywords in the title and submitting
to some directories, you’re going to get lapped
by someone who understands how to make
content, links, sharing & search demand an
integral part of how users interact with their
website.” - Rand Fishkin

SEO FOR
STARTUPS CAN BE
CHALLENGING.
Search engine results heavily
favor big brand websites with
thousands of links, a recognizable
brand name, and virtually unlimited
budgets for fresh content.

Top 16 Brands Dominating Worldwide
Google Results via Viperchill

Faced with daunting odds and
tepid initial results, many startups
quickly give up on SEO as a viable
marketing channel.
That’s a huge mistake.

SEO can be one of the best
channels for growth phase startups
to achieve traction at a reasonable
cost. Unlike other channels
where traffic scales in proportion
to budget, in SEO, brains and
creativity matter more than budget.

Survey Says SEO The Single Most
Important Marketing Channel For SMBs
Graphic via http://searchengineland.com/

Grab a copy of the Ultimate SEO
Checklist for Startups, which the team
at CanIRank uses internally
THE ULTIMATE SEO CHECKLIST FOR STARTUPS
1. ONE-TIME SETUP ACTIONS
☐ Submit to BetaList
☐ Launch on ProductHunt
☐ Post on Reddit Share Your Startup
☐ Create an Influencer Outreach tracking sheet to keep track of all the relationships you’re building with
bloggers, journalists, social media stars, and other influential people in your industry
☐ Submit to KillerStartups
☐ Submit to LaunchingNext
☐ Set up a CrunchBase profile
☐ Set up an Angel.co profile
☐ Add your site to AlternativeTo.net, and suggest it as an alternative to your competitors
☐ Set up a LinkedIn profile for your startup
☐ Set up a company Facebook page
☐ Use your internal links to create thematic “silos” within your information architecture. Start by linking
all related blog posts to each other –ideally with contextual links from within the body content of each
post – then make sure each of those posts links up to a Feature page which targets the most
important keywords for that particular silo
☐ Brainstorm keywords people might use when searching for your products and services. Use tools like
Google Keyword Planner and Ubersuggest.org to expand the list. (Note: Don’t worry about small
keyword variations that aren’t meaningfully different – Google ignores those anyway.) When you have
your starting list, use CanIRank to help you focus on the keywords that offer the best balance
between traffic potential, commercial value, ranking difficulty, and relevancy to your business.
Keywords that are too competitive for your site should go into a “Someday” sheet that you’ll revisit
later as your site becomes more authoritative. The others should be used to map out your site’s
information architecture.
☐ Map out your website’s information architecture. It should be a pyramid shape with your most
important 2 to 5 keywords being targeted with your homepage, next most important keywords being
targeted by mid-level Feature pages (1-3 keywords each), and lest competitive long-tail keywords
being targeted by low-level pages such as blog posts. Make sure your internal link structure reflects
this information hierarchy, so that you have the most links going to your homepage, second most
links going to your feature pages, and so on.
☐ Have a qualified professional do a technical SEO audit of your website to ensure your content is easily
crawled by search engines, and that there are no issued that could lead to penalties or demotions
THE ULTIMATE SEO CHECKLIST FOR STARTUPS
1. ONE-TIME SETUP ACTIONS
☐ Submit to BetaList
☐ Launch on ProductHunt
☐ Post on Reddit Share Your Startup
☐ Create an Influencer Outreach tracking sheet to keep track of all the relationships you’re building with
bloggers, journalists, social media stars, and other influential people in your industry
☐ Submit to KillerStartups
☐ Submit to LaunchingNext
☐ Set up a CrunchBase profile
☐ Set up an Angel.co profile
☐ Set up a LinkedIn profile for your startup
☐ Set up a company Facebook page
☐ Use your internal links to create thematic “silos” within your information architecture. Start by linking
all related blog posts to each other –ideally with contextual links from within the body content of each
post – then make sure each of those posts links up to a Feature page which targets the most
important keywords for that particular silo
☐ Brainstorm keywords people might use when searching for your products and services. Use tools like
Google Keyword Planner and Ubersuggest.org to expand the list. (Note: Don’t worry about small
keyword variations that aren’t meaningfully different – Google ignores those anyway.) When you have
your starting list, use CanIRank to help you focus on the keywords that offer the best balance
between traffic potential, commercial value, ranking difficulty, and relevancy to your business.
Keywords that are too competitive for your site should go into a “Someday” sheet that you’ll revisit
later as your site becomes more authoritative. The others should be used to map out your site’s
information architecture.
☐ Map out your website’s information architecture. It should be a pyramid shape with your most
important 2 to 5 keywords being targeted with your homepage, next most important keywords being
targeted by mid-level Feature pages (1-3 keywords each), and lest competitive long-tail keywords
being targeted by low-level pages such as blog posts. Make sure your internal link structure reflects
this information hierarchy, so that you have the most links going to your homepage, second most
links going to your feature pages, and so on.
☐ Have a qualified professional do a technical SEO audit of your website to ensure your content is easily
crawled by search engines, and that there are no issued that could lead to penalties or demotions

Numerous startup success stories such as Mint,
Quora, Buffer, HubSpot, Unbounce,
OKCupid, Groove, TripAdvisor, or Yelp
wouldn’t be half the company they are today without their
startup SEO strategies.

Plus, there’s good news: in the
past few years, SEO has become a
lot harder.
(Yes, that’s good news!)

It’s good news because SEO
is a zero-sum game. The more
challenging it becomes, the more
opportunities there are for you
and I and anyone else willing to
put in the work, find the best SEO
strategies, and do it right.

In this presentation we’ll share
5 specific SEO strategies
that you can put to use right
now to better leverage SEO as a
traction channel for your startup,
regardless of your size, budget, or
industry.

“The most successful companies make the
core progression—to first dominate a specific
niche and then scale to adjacent markets—a
part of their founding narrative.”
- Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on
Startups, or How to Build the Future

STARTUP SEO STRATEGY #1:
START IN A SMALL POND
CanIRank is best described as “SEO software”, an “SEO
tool”, or perhaps a “keyword research tool”. But we know
that if we tried to compete for those keywords as a young
SEO startup going up against much more established
players, we wouldn’t have a chance.

So instead of wasting resources trying to fight a battle we
can’t win, we applied SEO for Startups strategy #1:
start in a small pond.

More specifically, break down your overall
market into smaller chunks and choose
one to focus your SEO efforts on initially.

Discovering attainable keywords in the
CanIRank Grow My Content tool

As a startup you need to start
by targeting low competition
keywords even if they’re not the
ones that best describe your
business.

For CanIRank, we chose to focus
on the “keyword difficulty”
segment of the SEO market. This
was a great fit for us because:
1. Our keyword difficulty feature is
light years ahead of the
competition, and
2. No larger players were trying to
rank for “keyword difficulty” with
their home page.

So did it work?
CanIRank still doesn’t have very many links, but by
focusing on a single market niche rather than the overall
market terms like “SEO”, “SEO software”, “SEO tools”
and so on, we’ve managed to get our SEO startup on
page 2 in a relatively short period of time.

BE A BARNACLE

Every week there are literally
hundreds of new articles and blog
posts published talking about our
competitors. And unfortunately
for us, most of the bloggers and
journalists doing the writing haven’t
yet heard of CanIRank.

Eventually, we hope to be featured
in those articles. But in the
meantime, we have to settle
for being a barnacle. Just
as barnacles attach themselves to
whales for a free ride through the
ocean, startups can try to attach
themselves to the press coverage
of their larger competitors.

Every time a quality blog post or news article comes out
mentioning SEO software or our competitors, we’ll look
for a way to get involved.

Maybe we’ll make an insightful comment, connect
with the blogger on Twitter, or send the journalist a note
with some additional research they could use in future

In the short term, many people
researching your industry who
stumble across one of those
articles will notice your comments
and check you out as well. In the
long term, the bloggers, journalists
and other influencers who write on
your industry will become aware of
your startup and start including you
in their write-ups.

We thought so too! So we built our new Promote
my Content tool to automate the process of
monitoring and evaluating mentions of your
keywords or competitors:

INFLUENCER OUTREACH

The Promote my Content
tool can also be used to find the
most important influencers in your
industry: the ones who frequently
link to your competitors and share
their content.

Make influencers aware of
you and your startup by:
• Following them on social media
• Making helpful comments
• Sharing and link to their stuff

Next, get them liking your company:
• Feature influencers as an expert
• Mention them in press interviews or guest posts you
land at more important sites
• Send them helpful updates to their content, a free
infographic, link corrections, bug reports, etc.

One Way To Find Influencers: Use
CanIRank’s Promote My Content Tool
1. In the “Promote My Content” tool, select the content
you want to promote and the strategy you’d like
to use to find promotional opportunities. In this
example I’m using a CanIRank study comparing
different keyword difficulty metrics, and
the “Bloggers” strategy to find the most influential
bloggers who write about keyword difficulty.

2. The tool will give you a list of opportunities, scored
on the relevancy to your content and keyword, the
authority of the page and website, and actionability
(how difficult it is to get a link on that website)

CHEERLEADERS

Another great use for the new
Promote my Content
tool is finding forums or active
communities in your niche.

These forums don’t have to be
huge, just someplace with a cozy
feel where you fit in. Interact, help
people, build real relationships, go
to meet ups or conferences, and
meet the people in person.

Only then start talking about your
business, find some who are
interested and make them feel
like they’re part of the team,
get their feedback, ask them
about some SEO techniques and
strategies that worked for them, give
them early access to beta features,
give them free subscription,
implement their suggestions, share
how business is going and your
hopes and fears.

KATAMARI SEO

You’ve probably heard of the
long tail approach to SEO
before. Well, for startups and
anyone with a new, less-
established website, you may
need to start with the long, long,
looooooong tail.

It may only receive a trickle
of traffic, but it establishes
a beachhead for your search
presence and gives search engines
some behavioral data on your
website. With luck, 1 or 2 people in
that trickle of traffic may link to your
content or share it on social media,
and then your site will become just
a bit more authoritative.

Next time around, you’ll be able
to target a keyword that’s a bit
more competitive and the trickle of
traffic will become a stream.
Keep that virtuous cycle going and
eventually your website will be the
SEO powerhouse dominating the
rankings in your niche, and ranking
automatically for every keyword
you happen to mention once in a
blog post somewhere.

This is called the Katamari
approach to SEO since it’s
basically the website equivalent of
the popular game where you begin
with a small sticky ball and slowly
roll up larger and larger objects
until you’re the size of Mt.
Everest and can roll up entire

It has the distinction of having been invented by no
less an SEO luminary than Google’s Matt
Cutts, so you can rest assured it’s a Google-approved
SEO strategy.

Success with Katamari SEO or any long tail
SEO strategy relies upon 1 big thing:
Picking a keyword for which you can
easily rank!

A good first stop in your quest for the ideal long tail
keyword is sites like Quora and Yahoo! Answers, where
you can quickly see what kinds of questions people in
your niche have.

Process for finding Long Tail Keywords:
“Drill Down Technique”
1. Start with a keyword you’re interested and analyze it to
get your Ranking Probability score.
2. If your site has a Ranking Probability of 75% or better,
you’re done! Post on that keyword.
3. If not, click on “Find easier related keyword ideas” to
drill down into alternatives that are more specific than
your earlier keyword, and analyze those.
4. Go back to step 2 and repeat until you find a keyword
that you can rank for.

NOW GET STARTED ON YOUR SEO
FOR STARTUPS STRATEGY!

We know the challenges of running a startup.
You’re short on resources and the clock is
ticking. SEO can be an effective, low cost way
to grow your company. CanIRank can help.
Learn more

Follow us on Twitter: @canirank
and LinkedIn

Seo for Startups - 5 Ways to Use Brains Over Budget by @CanIRank

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