SEO for startups
Startups usually meet SEO in month nine, when the paid acquisition cost has doubled and the founder asks why the competitor gets free traffic. The answer is that the competitor started building pages in month one.
Peak Endurance, a sports clinic, Sep 2023 to May 2024, from 482,378 impressions. Their Search Console.
Startup SEO is a different job from local SEO. There is no map pack. It is choosing the fifty searches your buyers use, building a page for each, and earning links that make them rank. We run that program at a price a seed-stage company can carry.
Searches we build for, with the place name your customers use:
- [category] software
- best [category] tools
- [competitor] alternative
- how to [job your product does]
Services in this cluster
Who this is for
Businesses with one address, a service area and a phone that should ring more. The three problems below are the common ones in this group; fixing them is where the first three months go.
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A homepage that says the vision
Buyers search the category, the job and the competitor. A homepage about changing the world ranks for none of those. Category and comparison pages do.
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A blog nobody searched for
Company news and thought pieces bring no search traffic. Articles that answer a job your buyer is trying to do bring the right traffic for years.
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Technical debt from the marketing framework
Client-rendered pages, duplicate URLs from query strings and a docs site on a subdomain that hoards the links. Common, and fixable in the first month.
How we bring these businesses work
- Two to four pages or articles each month, chosen from the search map we build in month one
- Comparison and alternative pages for the competitors your buyers already know
- Technical fixes: rendering, indexing, internal links between docs, blog and product pages
- Four to eight links a month through guest content, partnerships and digital PR
- Search Console reporting by page group, with pipeline attribution if your CRM allows it
- A quarterly review of the search map against what actually ranked
Where we do this
The method is the same everywhere; what people search for and where the results come from are not. Each market has its own page, and so do the cities where startups search for this most.
How we work
A single product with one audience is a moderate month. A docs site, several product lines or an international rollout each make it a bigger one. We scope the work on a call and send a written quote before anything starts. The SEO services page explains what a month covers and who does it.
Need the website as well? See Startup web design.
Results from real clients
Every number below is from the client’s own Google Search Console, for the period shown. Impressions are how often the site appeared; clicks are people who arrived.
- 52,993clicksUp and Running Physical TherapyPhysical therapy · 1 Mar 2023 to 14 Mar 2024
- Impressions
- 2,238,155
- CTR
- 2.4%
- Avg. position
- 13.49
+139,355% clicks against the previous period of the same length.
- 12,285clicksBackcountry Physical TherapyPhysical therapy · 6 Jul 2023 to 31 May 2024
- Impressions
- 601,822
- CTR
- 2.0%
- Avg. position
- 19.3
+2,059% clicks against the previous period of the same length.
Questions startups ask us
When should a startup start SEO?
As soon as the product is stable enough to describe. Pages take three to nine months to mature, so starting in month one means traffic when the paid channel gets expensive.
Do you write technical content?
Yes, with a subject-matter interview per article. Engineering and product review every piece before it goes live.
Can you work with our marketing site framework?
Yes. Next.js, Astro, Webflow, Framer and WordPress are all fine. The first month includes a rendering and indexing check for whichever one you use.
How is success measured?
Search Console clicks by page group, sign-ups or demo requests attributed to organic, and, where the CRM allows, pipeline from organic.
Book a call with us
A 30-minute call in your working hours. Tell us what you sell and where, and we will tell you what we would do first and what it involves. Prefer email? Send your website through the form and the Passieon Team will reply within two working days.