Strategic-SEO-for-Startups-Kalzumeus-Software #

Why Startup SEO Is Different #

Essentially every business on the Internet from multi-billion dollar giants like Bank of America down to a one-man software business is dependent on SEO, because Google has become the primary navigation tool for the Internet. This is partially because search engine spam is indeed a problem and partially because Google is very good at influencing the culture of technically adept people, and it is in Google’s best interest to make people think that their algorithms are the authoritative voice of God.

SEO Is A Feedback Loop #

Sites tend to built self-reinforcing authority: the site at the top of the rankings for teddy bears (almost certainly Wikipedia, I can tell you without looking) is the first people go for teddy bears and the most likely to collect another citation when someone is writing about teddy bears. Strategies centering around user generated content really devolve into two things: one, you hope people will steal hand-crafted content from elsewhere and put it on your site while you look the other way long enough to build traction (hello, Youtube, Scribd, etc) and two, you generate vast amounts of mostly excruciatingly worthless content which happens to match an equally vast amount of search terms. Mass Semi-Amateur Content Creation: The Demand Media model is capturing quite a bit of attention these days: take an authority domain like eHow, use sophisticated algorithms to generate article ideas for it, pay an army of underemployed freelancers miniscule wages to write uninspired content about the suggested titles, collect hundreds of millions in AdSense revenue. Focus on evergreen content: A lot of people like blogs as content generation engines, and indeed, I think every startup should probably have a blog.

Good SEO Can Make Your Startup #

Your startup can succeed at SEO via the sweat of your brow and a bit of focused creativity, without having to spend hundreds of thousands to do so.