Ever since SEOmoz took venture capital investment last fall, I've been reading a lot of blogs and sites geared towards the startup world. Even though we've been around for 5 years (and Gillian and I have been doing web marketing for 10), I still think of us very much like a startup - we've grown from 3 people 3 years ago to 14 people today and we're worrying about things like burn rate, productization, marketing, and launch schedules, so I'm pretty sure we qualify. Thus, I'm inclined to read sites like Hacker News and to click on posts like these:
- The Year One Startup Handbook
- How to Save Money Running a Startup
- Ten Rules for Startup Success
- Ten Rules for Web Startups
- PR Tips for Startups: How to Get and Keep the Media's Attention
- 36 Startup Tips
- Startup Advice for Entrepreneurs
- Advice and Reading List for High Tech Startup Entrepreneurs
- Pithy Insights on Startup Marketing (at least here, one comment asks if the post is subtly recommending SEO)
- 7 Biggest Mistakes of Business Startups
- Startup Marketing: Big Bang vs. Darwinian Evolution
Let me just be clear on this point - not one of those posts has the word "SEO" in it, nor makes any clear reference to getting traffic from search engines. I'm forced to ask myself - are these people idiots? Are they being coy? Or have they really never experienced the built-in marketing channel that comes from ranking at the top of the engines for a relevant keyword phrase?
I hope it's the latter, because there's really no excuse for the sort of abject ignorance of startup "advisers" who suggest guerrilla marketing and word-of-mouth campaigns but never even examine the possibility that there might already be people searching for the product/service/website you're creating, and that by getting in front of their eyeballs right when they ask for it, you might have a good chance of succeeding.
Let me just beat a dead horse for a minute here.
Let's imagine you've just dreamed up some brilliant new web startup company that's going to change the world and fill this great unfulfilled need. Now, if only there were some way to figure out if other people were interested in solving the same problem. If only we had access to some sort of a repository of human queries that would tell us how popular and worthwhile our idea might be... Gee, that would be great...
For fuck's sake, people - get a clue.
See that screenshot up there? It's a basic keyword research tool from Google. You type in words or phrases related to your new business and Google will tell you if people are performing any searches in that arena. They'll even tell you how relatively popular or unpopular those queries might be.
So, for example, let's just go over to something like this big list of recent startups and choose one at random... how about Dripbook. What is Dripbook? Let's see... From their About Us page:
Dripbook is an online portfolio and community site for artists. Dripbook's mission is simple - to allow artists to easily publish their work online by taking the hassle, guesswork and expense out of creating a well designed, easily modifiable web presence.
That sounds pretty interesting, actually - like a competitor to what DeviantArt has been doing for a long time. Now if only there was a free way for them to market their service simply by attracting links and attention... Yeah, you can guess where I'm going with this. Let's start by taking advantage of that AdWords tool.
Wow... That's some pretty valuable information if you're starting up a site targeting online galleries for artists. You can see terms that people are searching for, how relatively popular they are, how much "advertising competition" (which usually translates directly into commercial value) each has, and even brainstorm potential areas to advance into ("fine art publishing" sounds interesting, for example).
Now just take it one step further and imagine that you're the CEO of (or the venture capitalist planning to invest in) Dripbook. How valuable would it be to see your site on this page?
Those top positions are probably bringing a few hundred visits every day, and every one of them is directly interested in your subject matter. In fact, they've even told you right as they arrive that they're desperately seeking a place where artists publish on the web. A good marketing opportunity? Yeah, I'd say so. In fact, I'd say it's better than being on the front page of TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb - after all, there's not a whole lot of TC readers who are going to sign up for art publishing accounts on your site - it's just not the right audience. Why not at least try to rank for something - with a title like "Dripbook | Welcome" it feels like you're not even making a half-hearted attempt.
Maybe I'm underestimating the SEO intelligence of web startups here. Maybe they already know the ins and outs of SEO so well - from the value proposition to the keyword targeting to the link strategies necessary to succeed - that it's totally unnecessary to even mention it as startup advice... Since I mentioned Y Combinator and Hacker News earlier (as it's one of the big sources for startup advice), let's see how some of the Y Combinator companies are performing on SEO (there's a list here):
- Draftmix - Fantasy Sports?! Oh man, there's a ton of searches around that topic. Fantasy Football alone has millions of searches every August. Let's see how they're... OH MY GOD!!! They don't even have a public page on the site with the words "fantasy football" in the title.
- Virtualmin - the web's most powerful web hosting control panel? That's terrific - they're actually targeting the keyword phrase in the title. Now if only they ranked in the top 100 results for "web hosting control panel" (which gets quite a few searches), I'd be even happier.
- Adpinion - This clever site lets advertisers sign up and solicits input from their users to tell them how to make better targeted ad campaigns. If only they had some targeting of their own (for goodness sake, the home page's title tag is "Adpinion"). Maybe ranking for keywords like "web advertising" or "web advertising strategies" or even "online advertising programs" (all of which have significant search volume) would help to bring some targeted leads their way.
- Octopart - Oh man... You're killing me here. It's a search engine for electronic parts, but it's not even making a sliver of an attempt to rank for the incredibly valuable search query - "electronic parts."
Going through the rest of the list just seems cruel - clearly, there's no SEO savvy here, not even the basic recognition that keyword targeting might be worthwhile. So much for the theory that startups already know their stuff on search engine optimization. Why? I don't know, but I suspect that it's because of the general attitude these communities tend to have about SEO. For example (from this thread):
How Important is SEO on your Startup's Priority List?
2 points by cperciva 173 days ago | link
Not important. If you build something which people want, they'll tell their friends about it. If the majority of your users are discovering you via Google, you're doing something wrong.
I know that's just one opinion, but if you spend enough time outside the SEO world, you'll find that it's a pervasive attitude. I'm not sure whether to be depressed or ecstatic - after all, that just means more search traffic for those of us who understand the power of SEO.
p.s. I should mention that my beef here is not with startups and startup CEOs (who have a ton on their plate). I'm frustrated with the experts of startup success providing online marketing advice that ignores SEO - to me, that's the real tragedy.
Hilariously, I run Draftmix.com and have just started subscribing to your blog. The reason most startups don't worry about SEO is that the industry is 90% snake oil. It's thje diet pill of the internet.
There are clearly some good sites that give good tips as far as SEO goes, but its hard to distinguish them from the overwhelming onslaught of crap. I started reading here because I was told you guys were one of the better ones.
We've recently redesigned our home page based on what I've read here and a couple other places. Did things like take words out of images and put them in text, have more fantasy sports related content on the homepage, adapt our affiliate links, etc.
I'd love to hear suggestions as to how to improve as well.
P.S. could you make that link text to us in your blog entry say "Fantasy Football"? J/K
Matt - thrilled to have you here and sorry for calling you out. Obviously, you're doing a lot of amazing things with the site and this post wasn't meant to criticize startups and startup CEOs who have plenty on their plate already. What I really wanted to do was turn some attention on why those who provide marketing advice to startups refuse to acknowledge SEO.
As for Draftmix in particular, I think it would be really smart to start with a list of the most important keywords and put together individual landing pages for each of them (a "fantasy football" page, a "fantasy baseball" page, etc.). Using the keywords in the anchor text of the links you point to them with is important and so is using those terms in the title tags. Maybe someone here will volunteer a few more suggestions (or you could post a question to us in Q+A if you'd like) :)
And yes - I can definitely change the anchor text to point to you with "fantasy football" - great to know that some SEO tactics are reaching the startup world!
Matt,
I appreciate your opinion, but saying that 90% of SEO is snake oil is a bit over the top. There are a lot of hard working people in this field. As a business owner and frequent interacter with start-ups I can tell you that you have to invest in your resources.
If you think that paying someone $99/month will get you in Google that isn't the fault of web marketing as a field. Business owners need to do their due dilligence and accept that you get what you pay for.
Wow! 90% of SEO is snake oil, eh? Just how much of the spell checking industry is snake oil?
first off - the SEO industry is not amphetimines. well, sort of, but not really.
secondly - you say that we're "snake oil" and "diet pills" then turn around and say that you used some of these tactics and want to learn more. What the fuck? we're either bullshit or not. you can't have your urinal cake and eat it too.
Mmmm, urinal cake...
If you really think that SEO is all snake oil, why are you wasting your time in here?
As Bugs Bunny would say - "What a Maroon!"
Alright guys, Matt seems to have "Mis-spoke" when he said that 90% of SEO is snake oil.
But, if you're in business, and you don't know anything about SEO - except when some guy cold calls you and tries to sell you $30 K worth of propietary SEO methods and guarantees you a "top 10 rank in Google" - and you get one of these calls or emails every week or so from some new genius.
Then it would probably be conservative to say that from this perspective SEO is 90% snake oil.
This is how many business owners see the SEO industry.
Let the down thumbing commence.
It's definetly conservative to say. It's frustrating, but it's the truth. People who are so upset about that comment must not deal with very many small business owners who get cold called daily by so called SEO Companies.
edit: I know, that arguements for another post.
5 minute freebie for homepage
1. through 5. Removed, because Tribune has a sports section and it may be considered a conflict of interest to assist this site.
But this one still applies . . .
6. Fix your SEO now or someone else is going to . . . Draft a better team . . . Crush you . . . Take your prize
And this my fellow SEOs is why we are still in business. Here is a company that knows exactly what he is suppose to do. Yet, he hasn't even done the basic on-site coding yet. What I told him is actually useful to him but to all of us it is just a given. Imagine what would happen if we were to provide him linking strategy, some usability feedback, a list of keyphrases that are optimized for the site, and then some viral marketing.
Snake oil, baby oil, motor oil, whatever you want to call me. Bottom line is that we are grease the wheels for our clients to find success by communicating properly to the search engines. Hell, we just want Google and others to know what our client's sites are about and what we'd like to be found for in the search engines.
I think a certain VC in Seattle has it right . . . hire a SEO firm to examine the SEO health before you invest. I know if I were investing millions into something I'd want to make sure the site I'm investing in knew how to communicate properly with the search engines. ;-)
But what do I know . . .
Brent D. Payne
@Matt - I am not going to berate you for saying that 90% of the SEO industry is snake oil - it isnt - but the opinion out of the web savvy crowd runs in a similar vein. And thats an issue the industry as a whole needs to adress.
Regarding your site - I will point out a few obvious points to me, simple because I respect your courage to come onto an SEO site that is well known, well discussed and furiously protected by most of its members, and speak your mind.
1. Home page: This ones isnt SEO, its more about accessiblity and web standards - the home page makes extensive use of images for text without the application of alt tags. I would advise those put in place, or if you can, get the images replaced with text - a good css designer should be able to replicate almost the same effect.
2. Blog - since your site lacks content (for obvious reasons) its a great idea that you have started a blog. But I dont think the implementation has been carried out correctly - see this link:
https://www.draftmix.com/news/index.php/category/deep-thoughts/
That index.php should not ideally show up - the flow from news/ to category/ should be seamless.
3. Blog - if you do intend to use the blog to drive traffic, then you need to add a few polugins that will allow you to add the correct SEO elements - at the moment I dont see a description tag and I suspect your titles are auto generated.
4. SERPs - visiting the search for your brand name notcie the titles - they dont say much and actually include the page name - I would start looking at those in detail to make sure they look more commercial and compelling enough for people to click on.
Matt - it's interesting to hear your comments. As someone who works across SEO & social media, where many of these start-ups live, I'd have to disagree (to a certain extent).
I know the rep issue SEO has (although I like to think it's less of an issue here in the UK) and can, to an extent understand it. That said, why would anyone notwant to be found via the engines?
What makes me chuckle is that the amount of hype & froth that comes out around a lot of start-ups makes diet pills look like a nice, tidy industry. People throw around buzz words like UGC, networks, interactivity and a whole load of other rubbish when they've never even checked whether anyone wants their product.
And whilst SEOs may have some shady characters, at least most of them don't inflate stock bubbles which is where I see a lot of these start-ups heading.
BTW - this is in no way a comment on your site or company; just a thought on the issues that (I feel) both sectors have with their image
I think that the
is a copout... and one that our own industry has adopted and perpetuated way too much. Yes, there are bad seeds out there, but there is tons of great information and people offering real services and value too -- but that has nothing to do with SEO...that's true of any and probably every business out there.
But anyone doing even a little bit of research, even someone who isn't totally web savvy or plugged into the industry, ought to be able to find some good sources of information -- which to me contradicts the 90/10 mix.
And that is also true of most things. If I didn't know much about stereos and was looking to buy a good one, I would take the first few reviews with a grain of salt and with caution, until I had read enough to feel knowledgable about the basics first, as well as enough to have a better idea about the reviews and information I read and how good, bad, accurate, or garbage it was.
Part of the problem is too many people don't value SEO. So they shop on price, get crappy results, and feel that validates their impression that SEO is crap. My Southwestern Bell telephone is crap, but I certainly wouldn't say that that means that all telephones are crap.
Matt, not saying that you are one of these, and I applaud you on continuing on the search enough to find your way here, but in general, businesses that spend more time and money on their business cards than they do on natural search optimization get no sympathy from me.
PS, welcome to the community, and if you haven't already, definitely check out the Beginner's Guide to SEO.
Rand,
At the risk of sounding defensive,I'm going to provide a few counter-points. (Note: These counter points are not to suggest that I don't think SEO is important, I do -- but I think open debate is important).
1. Though you definitely "qualify" as a startup (and a successful one at that), you are hardly representative of the typical startup when it comes to judging the value of SEO. You SELL SEO products/services. Your potential customers are much more likely to be addressable through SEO efforts than that of other types of businesses.
2. The argument that the authors of the articles you picked out (including me) are either (a) idiots, (b) coy or (c) have not experienced the benefits of SEO is not convincing. Are these the only possible reasons they don't specifically use the term "SEO" in their articles? It's frankly unlike you to make sweeping statements like this that are unsupported.
Let me offer an alternate view:
For many early-stage startups, the big predictor of success is not whether you can use SEO (or not). It's about finding a market and delivering value to that market. As it turns out for MANY startups, there is no existing search term that has enough traffic to show up on any radar -- because the idea is reasonably novel and people are just not searching on it -- yet. To base a startup on search keyword discovery does not seem optimal. If you're tapping existing markets, sure, it might make sense. What if you're doing something truly new?
Further, given limited time in the early daysof a startup, I'd argue that the BEST way for a startup founder to leverage the internet for marketing is to create a unique and differentiated "voice". Blog about the market opportunity. Say something interesting. Draw out feedback from your target market. It's MUCH more important to actually produce this differentiated content and build an audience. Can SEO help with this? Sure. But, it's not the do-all, end-all.
Summary: Startups should definitely use SEO (as it's a great way to reach a market -- much better than other channels). But, picking the right keywords is much less important than picking the right customers (market).
Dharmesh - I can definitely agree with many of these points, and I apologize for the sweeping generalizations - you're right, that's not my style and I never like it in others, so I should avoid it myself.
I would, however, suggest that no matter how "new" a project you're undertaking, there's going to be some content you'll create (or that your users will create) that will reach an existing search audience, even if it's just their user names or the existing ideas you're building on top of. It's fairly hard to imagine a list of marketing tasks for any startup (no matter their focus) that shouldn't include some mention of SEO.
Again, this is very unfortunate for those companies AND our industry. I hear the "SEO's are snake oil salesmen" arguement occasionally and the blank look on people's faces when I explain what I do for a living. My parents don't even fully understand what I do or how it works.
As an industry, we need to do a better job of marketing ourselves, our brand, and expertise to the outside world and marketing industry as a whole.
I'd tend to be careful with the religion here. You can know a lot about SEO but that doesn't mean you stand a chance running an Internet start-up. There are so many other issues that separate million dollar companies from 20 million dollar companies. Don't lose perspective one way or the other.
SEO does not = great web company. It is one of hundreds of cylinders that all have to work together. Hiring well. Planning well. Partnering well. Financing well. Managing well. Prioritizing well. Etc etc etc.
Kelly - I think you might have missed the point of the post. I'm not saying that SEO should be first and foremost in the minds of startups, I'm saying that it's lunacy that so many posts that provide marketing advice to startups fail to even mention the word. :)
One guy from a startup here in Boulder laughed in my face when I said I did SEO, in part, for a living.
'Don't you realize that's totally going to be obsolete in a year or two?" he asked.
I confessed I didn't.
"It is," he told me. "There are new Wordpress plugins lets you put keyword meta tags in your posts, so people don't need 'experts' to do it anymore. It's definitely on the way out."
I tried to explain some of the other things a SEO might need to do, and just gave up on him.
"It is," he told me. "There are new Wordpress plugins lets you put keyword meta tags in your posts, so people don't need 'experts' to do it anymore. It's definitely on the way out."
Oooh startup advice 2.0... Ignore the specilist and trust a bunch of plugins made by developers for free in their own past time. What ever next? Set your adwords campaign on auto pilot?
"For #$%@'$ sake people - get a clue." Has Rebecca tainted the water supply over there?
I like the post although I'm not so sure I wholly agree with your premise that one should expect to see SEO specifically mentioned in a general "business startup" article, which is what the links you've provided seem to focus on.
SEO is one very small subset of one element (Search), of business marketing. If you simply look at the numbers - PPC vs SEO, (which I'm sure you're familiar with), SEO is only an approximately $1 Billion/yr business - roughly equivalent to 10% of the total spend of paid search. (While I know these numbers may be off a bit, I think we can agree that the ratios are pretty close).
Then there is the statistic that even with a highly listed site such as SEOmoz, only a relatively minor percentage of traffic comes from search engines.
There are many other avenues of marketing that are also important such as direct mail, email, telemarketing (yes, telemarketing), print advertising, multimedia, trade shows, public speaking, etc.
My point being that from a holistic perspective, I personally would not expect to see an article specifically mention SEO as an area where a startup would initially invest marketing dollars.
That said, (and this may sound contrary), I do believe that this presents an opportunity for savvy SEO's to present a potentially compelling business case to the startup community.
Just my $.02
Maggie . . .
I am with Fishboy on this one. SEO is the lowest cost, highest reward for a company. It costs little to nothing to do great SEO (a consultant, or an inhouse person will be peanuts in comparison to the other costs for the startup). The return on those peanuts . . . will be insanely worth it.
I'd go as far to monetize the value of paid search versus SEO for that same term. $1 CPC at 30% impressions (only 30% of people notice adwords ads) at 3% CTR (if that) versus organic placement at 70% impressions and 10% CTR (or higher). The model for the value of SEO happens pretty damn quick that way.
I do agree that 10x more people know PPC versus SEO though.
Brent D. Payne
Well Brent,
It took me about five minutes to figure out who you were addressing with Maggie and Fishboy. ;) I told you I was slow.
Don't mistake my comment. I was only suggesting that I don't find it odd that SEO wasn't mentioned specifically in a general Startup marketing article. As for the ROI on SEO, I agree wholeheartedly. ;)
If I wanted to see startup marketing articles that mention SEO, I would simply type the keyword:
SEO for startup.
You get what you look for...
There are many other avenues of marketing that are also important such as direct mail, email, telemarketing (yes, telemarketing), print advertising, multimedia, trade shows, public speaking, etc.
I believe that completely - I agree with Rand that there should be emphasis on SEO, but not as highly as to merit a mention in a list - marketing is a craft - you need to make sure that you have all the ingredients in the right propotions - A business needs to analyse its target market, their attitudes to the various channels presented, and then consider the different marketing techniques.
I know of online start ups in the UK (local directory services) that do realy well on their SEO and dominate their local long tail - yet most their selling is done via cold calling and telemarketing.
Rand,
I'm going to take a middle ground on this. You're right that startups need to have greater emphasis on SEO, but they need to need to have greater emphasis on many things. Search - both paid and natural - should represent pieces of a startup's marketing plan. I think the big problem is that too many startups assume their web designers know SEO and that too many SEO shops remain segregated from web design. Growing a website is not the important part for these folks; growing a business is.
Any design firm that isn't developing SEO skills in-house or working with SEO consultants during the design process is short-changing their customers. And SEO firms should look at where they fit as part of the whole. Startup CEO's and VC's have many things to worry about. The more SEO becomes integrated into the process, the more likely it is that startups - and the SEO's themselves - will benefit.
Tim - I think you might be misinterpreting my post. I'm not saying that SEO always needs to be first and foremost among what startups are paying attention to. Instead, I'm saying that if marketing people are offering marketing advice to startups about how to do marketing for their products and businesses, they should consider adding SEO to that mix. At the basic level, it's one of the least expensive, highest return investments in knowledge you can make, and it's embarassing that so few supposedly "tech-savvy," and "web-savvy," marketers are ignoring it so completley.
Hi Rand,
Actually, I think we agree pretty closely on that point. The problem isn't that startups have the wrong focus - it's that the folks selling them design services often have, hmmm, we'll call it incomplete focus, just to be charitable. Now the flipside is that SEO's need to offer their services more holistically. Instead of focusing so narrowly on one - admittedly critical - aspect of the site, why not offer a complete solution. What amazes me isn't that there aren't good SEO firms or good design firms or good strategy firms. It's that so few seem to come to the table with a solution that encompasses all of those aspects. Because at the end of the day, a site's success - and the success of the business that site supports - depends on the seamless integration of all those things.
I'm disappointed in myself. Despite being a very big advocate of SEO (and inbound marketing in general), it is not coming through in my writing on OnStartups.com .
In my defense, I'd say that I'm a big believer in SEO, but the primary article cited was dealing with a higher level abstraction (not talking about SEO, but definitely saying that classic "outbound" marketing just doesn't work well). Though I didn't use the term SEO, I did say "Don't look for customers, help them find you".
But, point well taken. Next time I talk about marketing, I'll be sure to actually use the term SEO.
Rand, is this the first time you dropped the F-bomb in your blog? Congrats...welcome to the club. In this context, using the F-bomb is quite appropriate because a startup that doesn't consider SEO ultimately won't get the f*cking visitors they need to drive revenue and will end up end the f*cking online dot com dead pool. :.)
Good point Todd.
It is unfortunate that these resources don't explicitly mention SEO, but not every start-up is web-driven.
I have to agree with some of cperciva's comment. Being #1 in search is not a business model, at best it is a channel. Unless you are a start-up with good backing you should probably be refining other parts of your marketing than search, unless your bussines is web only.
There are other problems too....
Even though a team has a dedicated person looking into traffic and they know about SEO, conversation is around "we need to build the product" first.
Only when product is completely built (if it is ever) and then company does not get any traffic and investors are shouting, startups realize - 'oh, we need to market - what about SEO'
Another classic - Can we double our traffic using SEO? Who the hell knows?
-> Well, it is not going anywhere if you don't :(
Hehe. The obvious solution for this is to, uh, submit articles to News.YC.
FWIW, a good percentage of my posts (which often appear on YC News) have to do with SEO ( https://www.tonywright.com/category/seo/ ).
(Disclosure: I am a YC08 Founder)
I think it's a "devil you know" issue, to some degree-- I actually offered to help some other YC founders with their SEO plans and didn't get a lot of uptake- people prefer to tackle the problems they understand.
Another issue (and this might be controversial) is that maybe SEO doesn't matter a damn bit for most startups... At least in the very early stages (which is what most people tend to write about).
I always look at startups as a bucket with holes in it. You can focus on increasing the flow of water into the bucket (SEO, viral, PR, marketing) or you can work on patching the holes in the bucket (adding value, improving product/market fit, improving the "lower" part of your funnel). With time being the most scarce resource in a startup, any time you spend improving "flow" takes away from "patching the bucket".
If you've got a great "bucket" (a product people freakin' LOVE and love to talk about), all of the "flow" tasks get a lot easier. If you've got a mediocre"bucket" with lots of holes, great "flow" isn't going to help make patching the bucket easier.
So (as a guy who has built and sold 2 businesses and the third is looking pretty darn good), I'd recommend ignoring a concerted SEO effort in favor of making your product better (if you have to make a choice). Ideally, you're funded and you don't HAVE to make a choice (but most startups do).
Great insight. I definitely can agree with your analogy having had to patch several holes myself ;).
I guess SEO needs to be part of the conversation when you are a startup. Missing SEM completely can be a shot in the foot. Imagine investing your marketing time/effort on the wrong medium when you should be focusing a certain percentage of your efforts on search?
I read this post with a lot of interest. Found it while searching for articles about Dripbook online. I'm one of the two creators of Dripbook, one of the Web sites / Startups mentioned early on in the article.Wanted to let you know that I think you're right about a lot of what you say. It's something we need to address more clearly.
It is tough and daunting but so is the general sphere of PR for a starup.
Thanks for the article.
-Alex Wright, Dripbook
I'm both a ceo and an seo advocate, used to work at eBay so know a few things about the web, but now run a flower website. So I guess that puts me in a few camps and thus makes me non-partisan.
So, to add to the already vociferous commenting, Rand:
Yours intrigued to hear the answer to that question
Will
From my own experience having helped with a startup a few years ago. There were no blogs, articles, books or anything really, that directed entrepreneurs like us to SEO until we stumbled upon it on our own.
Even ecommerce startup books made no reference to SEO (which should be a whole subsection in itself)!
I agree with previous comments that entrepreneurs are probably focusing on their business and on many other aspects. But if you're trying to reach an audience with your website or are an ecommerce firm, SEO needs to be front & center.
But to turn the flip side of the coin; for those new companies that DO know about SEO and SEM in general, that's their competitive advantage against other startups in their market.
Well written Rand -but if people are confusded about marketing a start up, its going to confuse them even more to start talking about SEO - even full blown marketers still have difficulties getting to grips with it.
I agree that there should be a major element of utilising the web to draw traffic - but it should be a full online marketing resource led perspective as opposed to pure SEO.
Looking at one of the links you put out - one author says "Build a community. Use blogging and social software to make sure people hear about you". Right thats a good idea, but again fails to adress the full question of the power of online marketing - it comes as a package.
But since you have exposed the lack of a decent article in a profitable niche, maybe next week sphinn would be full of headlines such as "10 things a startup should know about SEO" ...
I'm getting pretty tired of SEO advice from SEO blogs that can't get a good hit from google.
btw, it's not generally a good idea to sound angry either.
On the other hand, passive-agressive linking and snide comments are a great idea!
If you have some sort of problem with SEOmoz, feel free to tell us why like a capable, mature adult.
Since you're talking about advice from SEO blogs, why not search for just that - SEO blog. I don't know about you, but for me they're the top result.
While you're at it, why not search for SEO as well? For me, they're result number 8. Not too shabby, I'd say.
And, honestly, as long as the advice is good what the heck does it matter?
Rand,
I felt I understood the point of the post but you are citing 11 bulleted articles and a couple of YCombinator companies (and those guys get what..$5,000 - $20,000 from YCombinator to build a company?)
I think that there are tons of people giving start-up advice that includes SEO. I am reminded of a meeting that I had with a "large, venture funded online real-estate sales" site not so many months ago where I spent most of my time reccomending that SEO might be an area where they should spent a lot of time.
In the case of the "art" example, I am somewhat qualified to talk on this subject because Imagekind is a company I started in the art space. If you enter "sell art online" in Google we take 2 of the top 5 spots.
The trouble with these mega crowded sectors is that there are $250 million revenue per year companies (like Art.com) who can always employ more SEO resources than our entire annual budget. So, without getting into too much detail, it is more interesting for us to rank for other terms...like...say...an artists name than to try to rank high on the really obvious terms. That amount of money, time and effort is better spent (in many cases) working on a unique product angle.
But I digress. I think there is a lot of advice out there that suggests how important SEO is to start-ups targeting the consumer space. Tons and tons of links.
All I was saying is that it would be tough to say for sure whether there are more links advising the importance of SEO or more links that fail to mention its importance. So, it felt a lot easier to say that SEO is of course important if your business relies on search traffic. But, it is in the context of a lot of other things. The trouble with writing such articles (as I occassionally do) is that one person will think SEO is the most important cylinder to be firing at 100% and another person will think that a killer product experience with truly innovative features is the thing that will set them apart. Yet another will say that product marketing is the place where people should "really focus".
Kelly - those are great points and I don't disagree. I was just, as I said, getting tired of reading marketing advice for getting on TechCrunch or Digg while simultaneously feeling that SEO was being ignored.
BTW - We have to teach you to use the direct reply for comments here at SEOmoz. It's one of the blog's best features! ;)
Excellent post and good points all. No one HAS to optimize for search. However, the lack of doing so is to invite peril as more and more information seeking is done using search engines. And, as we all know, search engines are getting smarter and smarter in how they decide who gets the prime visibility to the searcher. I believe that this has more to do with distraction (as Rand has mentioned several times in different comments) that dismissal. Writing about it here will have little impact on the situation. Outreach and education to blogs, forums and financing entities would seem to be the most effective next step. I'll be doing such at a meeting of an angel capital consortium here in the Pacific Northwest.
This one had me cracking up. I'm also in the startup world but we only do SEO (basically, lol.) so it's interesting to see how many companies out there have no idea.
At least there's plenty of opportunity.
Yes, you're right. Those who think that SEO is 'snake oil' are simply leaving the field clear for us. :)
Rand,
What timing for this article. We are in the process of taking on 2 start-up web 2.0 websites and they not only thought SEO was un-important, but they thought it was just SPAM on your page. One webmaster had the audacity to say, "So you're like going to spam our homepage with key words and use tags and stuff like they said to use in school, you know that doesn't work anymore." While that's not the most important factor in ranking, it damn sure helps and taking notice to what competitiors are doing is a good first step. It seems like everyone is design crazy and praying on a good Mashable review to get traffic. Might be great for spikes but a well rounded marketing campaign including SEO is imperitive for many if not all of these start-ups to survive!
Amen, Rand!
I live in Boulder, Colorado - startup central - and it feels like 90% of the people in the startup scene are completely oblivious to what SEO is, or why it could possibly be important to a startup.
I would say that most of these companies with millions in funding do not have keywords on the home page, let alone any kind of strategy to build the kind of link and content they need to reach their desired audience. They tend to focus on customer-service style evangelism and outreach, with I think must be a bloody uphill battle compared to siphoning in a funnel of highly-interested Google and del.icio.us visitors.
It's just a very different vibe than the SEO / social media-centric reality I live in.
For content, they typically blog about the company BBQ , SXSW, and the new office Playstation 3.
"If we build it, they will come" seems to be the prevailing attitude.
Yes, a few companies "get lucky" and get discovered by word of mouth and digital buzz, but most of them do not, so why not have the search engines on your side?
ROFL.... Sad, just sad...
Rand, don't let the cat out the bag. Who needs more competition :)
Great post Rand,
I can't help but feel like this is just a pixel within the bigger picture. I think it is an important area to focus on and in some ways, SEO might be even a little more critical for startups than existing businesses...but then again, it's critical in both cases.
However, I'm not sure that SEO has gained enough attention and focus yet in marketing and business advice in general, for established businesses. There is a lot written about SEO as a topic, but less about SEO as part of the broader topics...for both startups and existing businesses.
Rand,
I think you make some very valid points. Identifying keywords and the competition for those keywords gives a first glance - if not more - at the market opportunity for any new start up. Let's face it. Even if the product/service isn't a web-based one, there's a strong likelihood prospective customers could go online to find out more information for the category. And starting with basic keyword research will give a start-up owner an idea of what's already out there.
Jennifer
The issue is one of public awareness. All of us here know what SEO stands for. All of us here attending conferences, SES, SMX, etc know what those are for. - But, the general public simply does not know about any of it - obviously!
It's almost an underground world we here live in. Too tight a niche, almost incestuous (yes, Lisa - I used that horrid word!!). Every day having to explain to others what the heck we actually do and why it matters. I don't believe for a second that an SEO hasn't had to explain what SEO is in some convoluted way - and I don't mean by simply stating "search engine optimization"!! The spelled out words even draw a look of "wha...??"!
This topic does bring attention back to developing some sort of standard for SEO. This way a more public and approachable method might come to light for interested, but non-knowing, parties. We have to find ways to "get the word" (or "keywords") out! Allow for some form of public standards that can easily be understood and are part of an easily described procedure or plan so that consumers can compare, so that they can diseminate between the good, the bad, and the ugly! Then, maybe, just maybe, SEO will be added to the Top-x list for startup advice!!
Looks like Rand's not telling on why he nofollows some links and not others in his post. :(
I guess I'll just have to concoct some outlandish conspiracy theory in my mind. :)
I replied to this in an earlier comment, when a member noted that I should be careful about linking out to Calcanis. :)
I think you are right on Rand. Any web-based startups should be thinking how they can get as much mileage from thier precious capital as possible. SEO is a great arrow in the quiver for startup marketers. Not understanding it is simply no excuse - startup people dont understand most of what they are getting themselves into in the first place. Successful ones learn fast and keep thier eyes open.
The biggest problem in startups is that they often have poor marketing overall. Frankly there are a lot of marketing people that are really just marcomm people - they don't have good skills in market strategy and product marketing.
The only problem in your post is that you picked one of my competitors to highlight. I dont mind you giving them pointers but did you have to give them freebie link love too? My company, SupplyFrame, is fully engaged in SEO and work for every link we can get!
you said it!
For most startups SEO is a lot of abracadabra. It is easy to sell them SEO and they think that next week they will rank number one.
I can completely relate to your frustration. I met with a startup company who was developing an online database of music for choir directors. They wanted me to help with a marketing display and materials for their launch event at a big convention, but when I asked about their search engine optimization & marketing plan, they not only didn't have one, but they thought it was completely unnecessary. They firmly believed that their community would just remember their URL and the URL would be passed along virally.
I just can't wrap my head around anyone developing an online service who doesn't think that they need to do search marketing for that service. Needless to say, my passion about search marketing means that they found someone else to develop their booth display and marketing materials. Which is OK by me.
Great article. One I'll refer to often when working with new startups. Agreed with your comments on CDixon.org as well.
Oh my God.
Amazing article, really insightful.
Just the anger ! Haha
As an entrepreneur, I have been surprised that SEO has become one of top 3 priorities of my business.
My site is doing really well with direct traffic - people in my niche really love the quality of the content and offering.
The challenge is that other websites with token content run by SEO still have 4 times the traffic. Interestingly, their repeat traffic is really low as it seems almost all of theirs is from Google.
My goal now is to build my search traffic to that level and I think it will increase my overall revenue by 4x or more.
Most business advisors -- attorneys, CPAs, bankers, SBA advisors -- I know don't understand Web enterprises, much less SEO. Their eyes tend to glaze over when the conversation gets a little deeper than figuring out a domain name. They think a Web designer does it all - from writing copy to designing the site to marketing it to...you name it. And, of course, it can all be done in a week or two.
Thanks for venting for me!
As a relative newbie to the SEO game, I can appreciate the start-ups who have a hard time incorporating search optimization into their marketing.
My company recently completed a study that found the average small business (<100 employees) is using 5.3 providers for their marketing. That includes everything from Do-It-Yourself and freelancers to in-house staff and the secretary's kid.
The big problem for these guys is that they're running around to 5 or 6 marketing "experts" trying to make sure their marketing is coordinated. All of this on top of running a company...sales, HR, operations, marketing...it's too many hats.
The other problem I've noticed is that SEO is way too complex for most small businesses to understand. Tech start-ups might get it, but most entrepreneurs don't have that background. Hell, I'm a professional marketing copywriter and even I barely get it.
Thanks for publishing this post...it's a useful resource. Great comments, too.
Is the data from the small business study available (either for free or for a fee)?
From my perspective, SEO is part of a larger package. Before directing potential customers to your site, make certain that there is a site ready to do business when they arrive.
Along the way, optimize for search terms, keywords and so on and on and on.
But this is a re-iterative process. Get it good today. Get it better next week. Get it better still, next month.
Yes, pay attention to SEO concerns when creating the content but don't give all the weight to the SEO issues and skimp on customer / reader useability. There is no sense in getting a million uniques a day if only two of them can figure out how to spend money with you and neither of these are from your target audience. Make the site so that ALL 1,000,000 can help your bottom line easily.
My own blogs are NOT poster children for SEO ... but I feel that I am still early in their life span. A few bucks here and there helps keep the doors open while I carve out time to do better.
I agree with your post. My clients are small business owners and the general thought is that if you have a website, then traffic will naturally come, no matter if it is optimized or not. I've been amazed at the lack of optimization and have had more than one client with nothing but "home" as their title.
What has worked for my business is a thorough explaining of what SEO is and give them examples and visuals, such as allowing them to search for a known service or product. This is usually what convinces them and the lightbulb goes off.
Yes, while it's important to market offline, if you indeed have a site, it is just as important to market online as well.
Ashley aka ProAssets Online
It is amazing to me that so many start up businesses would overlook SEO. In our case, where we save money on our internet marketing presence we can now spend more on trade shows and advertising. So, by using SEO in our overall marketing strategy, we extend our marketing budget. It just makes dollars and cents to us.
Rand,
Maybe all of those articles were written by SEO's trying to optimize for something else for a change!
Or even more likely, written by people who have never actually STARTED a business. If they had, they would be far too busy to write these articles. =)
~Nick
Spoken like a zealot, *not* an entrepreneur.
SEO is definitely important. But it isn't always the most important thing you have to do when you are in the very early days. And if you do too good of a job with your SEO, you might actually have to back up what you claim to do. Didn't we live through the vaporware revolution 10-12 years ago?
No doubt SEO is critical, but so are any number of other things.
Chris
https://treadaway.typepad.com
SEO is definitely something I am trying to take advantage of with my startup. It takes time to properly build up rank for certain searches, though.
People either know what SEO is and how it can be useful as a supplement to their business (or, sometimes, their entire business) or they just don't understand SEO at all and don't see the value of it.
If the do see the value of it, many people also have unrealistic expectations of how high they can quickly rank in the search engines. SEO is work. It's work that a lot people could probably do... if they took the time to research the subject. And when I say research I mean a LOT of research. That Wordpress plugin that lets you include meta tags is useful, very useful but how are you going to decide what meta tag keywords are valuable? Oh and guess what? Meta tags aren't as important as they once were..
Good post. Thanks. I learned stuff.
rand - if i write a post on how useless and unimportant SEO is for startups/small business/medium sized businesses/large cap and multi nats will you link to it?
Im tired of Calicanis getting all the links.
Good point! I should totally nofollow those. He is NOT a trusted neighborhood :)
Well said.
Actually, I don't know if you caught Calacanis at SES, but he basically said "my bad." (I am WAY paraphrasing on that one). Still, he's moved off his former "SEO is stupid" position.
The important bit is having an integrated/well thought out marketing approach to your product/service, including SEO as part of the whole.
I'm beginning to think there's not much point arguing with people who don't set much store by SEO. Just leave them alone. They'll soon have to eat humble pie when they realize that other, newer businesses that are employing search marketing strategies are way ahead of them. Don't you think?
Chalk me up a FAIL for not reading all of the comments, but with only 3 days left in the office, time's a slippin'.
Rand - great post. And extra kudos for what must be your first use of the f word in a public post.
With regards to why SEO isn't considered, I just think it's a mixture of ignorance & arrogance.
Ignorance - they simply don't get it and don't understand it. Half of these VCs should at least be doing keyword research to see if there's a viable business there at all before they start pouring Granny's savings into another Me 2.0 site. And as for the start-up owners, most of these guys live on TechCrunch & the like, where SEO is also never mentioned, so it's simply not on their horizon.
Arrogance - they think that with some neat branding, a plug from Michael Arrington, and a stand at SXSW, they're good to go. The utter chutzpah of some of these guys, is in many ways scary, but is also, I guess, the reason that they (sometimes succeed).
The F bomb was quite effective! ;)
Great post...it just goes to show that most people are still unaware of the benefits and the opportunity is greater for us? Let's hope!
Thanks for linking to the 'hacker news' site - I guess many SEOs like to think of themselves as entrepreneurs and the site looks like it will be very useful for me. There are many ways you can be entrepreneurial in life and whilst you can succeed online with unintentional or no SEO, your odds are significantly reduced.
Whilst there are many balls for a CEO of a startup to juggle, you would expect that SEO would be one of the ones they planned not to drop! The snake oil argument holds some weight, although IMO a much lower %, but let’s say it is 90% - if a CEO acknowledges SEO as a good thing the responsibility lies on him to find the 10% or build an employee into the 10%. It doesn’t make SEO any less important.
OK this will sound gay but I love it when Rand talks dirty (the f.. word). Anyhow for once in a blue moon, I 100% agree with you.
Oh yea Sean,
"what a maroon" that had to be the best comment I heard in here for a while. Thumbs up.
Nice controversial post, Rand...all this talk of snake oil is indicative of the slippery nature of this topic. Not quite all new startups are necessarily web based business endeavours, so while SEO is undeniably one of the most important components of having a website, the value to some clients are debatable.
One thing that we all have to agree on is that in today's modern business world you need a decent website to be taken seriously. Optimising flows from this, but convincing customers about the importance of optimisation (at a price....of course) is challenging, to say the least.
Oh baby . . . Rand, I love it when you talk dirty to me. Go get the snake oil and rub it all over your slimey skin. Then go put on your really bad suit and pick up that pipe over in the corner so we can smoke some SEO crack together as we whisper in a dark corner about how we made some naive person sign a really long contract while we made him chase his tail. Growl . . . that black hat, that looks nice. ;-)
Rand, this is the side of you I like. Informative and yet REAL. When you get worked up you show your emotion and it comes off really well. Yeah, so you dropped an F-Bomb . . . it was real and that is what I like to see from you.
P.S. If you think I am gay after reading this post . . . then you definitely do not know me. Woman Issues photo. ;-)
"I'm frustrated with the experts of startup success providing online marketing advice that ignores SEO - to me, that's the real tragedy."
Another point that occured to me-- these experts of startup success generally succeeded without SEO... If SEO was a key componant to their successes, presumably the experts would write about it, right? Surely, you're not suggesting they're keeping it to themselves.
Note, I'm not saying they didn't eventually get value (even tremendous value) from SEO efforts, but it is not a key element for EARLY product success, which is the challenge that most startups are facing.
Tony - I think that's dead wrong. Calcanis very much succeeded at least in part due to some very smart SEO (and look at all the SEO he's doing on Mahalo - iterating and improving to get better rankings and more traffic). Dharmesh Shah (who commented above in this thread) is a huge SEO proponent and he also left it out of his marketing advice.
I'd say that if you're not doing any keyword research when checking out the market space and not doing any keyword targeting after launch, you might very well suceed, but it's in spite of ignoring SEO, not because of it. :)
Heh-- you don't have to convince me that it's valuable. I've done my keyword research. ;-) But dead wrong it is not.
Calcanis did do quite well with SEO (though I'm not convinced it was on purpose). It's obviously no surprise that lots of startups ignore SEO. But the surprise (to me) is that many startups who were wildly successful totally ignored SEO until they were already hugely successful.
We can all probably easily name wildly successful startups that prioritized SEO, but (as you point out) a large number (if not a clear majority) of the success stories (the guys who sold their companies for vast piles of money) do not cite SEO as a critical part of their early strategy.
I am personally on the "ecstatic" side of things here. As long as there are those who see no value in the billions of searches per day, and limiting their own potential, we who do value it get the bigger peice of cake. And I like cake.
Two big mistakes:
1. Change your title - you shouldn't sound angry on your blog, even if you are.
2. We aren't going to change the world, the world changes us.