When you say “SEO” to a business owner or manager, it’s hard to know exactly what they are going to think of. It’s a craft that’s rather inexact and challenging to define, much less implement. The idea of the “right” SEO has changed over the years.
A lot of startups tend to ignore it as they get going.
This is a significant mistake.
The key reason why is that it gives Google the wrong impression right from the start. They try to index pages, and without some semblance of SEO, often times they’re either unable to index, index the page incorrectly, or because on-page and internal SEO is such a large part of the search ranking algorithm, bury it so far down the search results it is useless.
That’s a shame, as there are some solutions to begin to do SEO that don’t require a graduate of MIT to accomplish.
Heard about Minimum Viable SEO?
The folks at Priceonomics.com coined the term, “minimum viable SEO“, which means exactly how much SEO can you get by with to start. While not an ideal strategy, it sure beats not doing anything. Here are a few of the items they mentioned, with a few of our own thoughts tossed in because I couldn’t help myself!
Decide on a keyword strategy – This will help you see not just what your site structure will look like, but also how quickly you’ll be into profit. One option is to go after the long tail of search, meaning keywords which are commonly 3-5 words long, often with product or model numbers. They don’t get a ton of searches everyday, but are infinitely easier to rank for. Add a few thousand of these up, and you win. Another way to go is to go after a single keyword, like “auto insurance San Diego” you’ll typically be attempting to rank only your home page. For those who have a business with a local presence, make sure you have local geo-modifiers on your keywords, as in the previously mentioned example.
Use breadcrumb navigation – You’ve seen this before. It is simply a set of links that show where you’ve been on the site, and where you are now. This really is of great help for the searcher, (which Google likes) and takes care of a good deal of internal linkage. Here is what it typically looks like: Home > Tablets > Apple > Ipad 2 3g
Use accurate title tags – Making sure the title tag on your page is accurate, which means it is or contains the keyword you would like that page ranked for, is probably the most important SEO task you can do. Using local geo-modifiers is very important here too.
Performing minimum viable SEO is a good way to start, and infinitely better than doing nothing. Just don’t let it end there!