What is the 80/20 for SEO easy wins for a new bootstrapped startup?

I've done a little SEO in my time :-)

The 20%:

1. Make sure Google can crawl and index all your pages and content easily, and that you're not using any tech, awkward (or missing) internal link structures, or content practices (e.g. video/animations with no parse-able text, interactive content w/ no parse-able text, etc) that stops Googlebot from accessing your work.

2. Create content that...

   a) addresses real problems that people are searching Google for

   b) truly solves the searcher's problem, and takes them all the way through the solution (i.e. it can't just be "marketing" for your product)

   c) intelligently employs the words and phrases searchers actually type into Google (so do your keyword research and match your topics + headlines to the words + phrases they use)

   d) doesn't annoy or piss off users such that they click the back button and choose someone else's link instead of yours

   e) earns links and amplification (see #3 below)

3. Have a great answer to the question: "Who will help amplify/link to this and WHY?" If you can nail that, and then get what you create in front of those right people/organizations, your ability to earn amplification, engagement, and links will be vastly better than simply trying to make stuff, then put it in front of likely linkers. Craft content the way Amazon crafts products - write the press release first. List the people who will want to share it/tweet it/post about it/write about it/link to it/etc. and then explain their motivations. Now you've got content that has the potential to earn the ranking signals you need.

p.s. Right now, your site looks like it's just a single page, which is really, really hard to do SEO for (at most, you might get it ranking for a half dozen keywords or so, but it would take a lot of links, some better keyword targeting, and likely a page that better "solves" those search queries). I don't love trying to solve searcher queries on pages designed to convert browsers to customers (it's often quite difficult to balance both). My suggestion would be to create a resources, news, blog, or content section on a subfolder (NOT a subdomain!) of your site that starts targeting queries with content that solves the searchers' problems and is likely to earn links + amplification.

p.p.s. This is just the tip of the iceberg. I did a video for Skillshare that's free on SEO for startup founders that might be helpful here: https://www.skillshare.com/classes/SEO-Today-Strategies-to-Earn-Trust-Rank-High-and-Stand-Out/423483018

No, no, no. This is "on-page stuff" and "keyword research" is all wrong.

You're asking for the 80/20, so you literally want the 20% of activities that will produce 80% of the results?

Build backlinks.

You can have a jacked up website, have all of your on-page stuff completely wrong, but if you have enough high quality backlinks from authority sites then you'll see some results.

Your SaaS tool is about affiliate marketing (I have a client who is at the top of this industry btw).

Getting all of your on-page stuff right won't do anything for your ranking, you'll still be on page 150 in Google.

But, get some links from huge affiliate authority sites like Clickbank, HasOffers, CJ, Shareasale, Rakuten, Linkshare, Amazon Affiliate section, etc. and it would trump any on-page mistake you made.

(Not that any of those sites are going to link to you, since some would consider you competition, but you get the idea).

In my experience it's

1. Get the basics right. (headings, titles, descriptions)

2. Find the right keywords. (This tool helped me get my blog from 1.5K monthly uniques to 3K in a few months https://www.hittail.com/)

3. Keep visitors engaged.

At the end of the day, Google wants to give it's customers the highest quality search results.

One very important signal for this is bounce rate. So make sure your content is engaging. Make sure to suggest other articles to read.

EDIT

Here's a screenshot of my traffic over ~3 years.

I started implementing advice from hit tail in March 2016.

Coming in a little late here, but here’s my take.

The 80:20 of SEO is making the decision that you’re going to take it seriously.

Whilst a lot of the advice given in this thread is useful, tactful, the reality is that to win you need to play the game.

What’s the game?

The game is displacing your competitors in exchange for your website and stealing their existing traffic. That’s literally what you’re doing.

If you’re getting clicks, someone else isn’t.

For every search query there is only a handful of pretty blue links to click on and if you’re not #1 or #2 you’re left with nothing.

Breaking down how your competitors rank, figuring out how they got there, doing deep research into their link profiles, working out how those companies leveraged shortcuts (yes, these do exist), cutting through the noise to work out which terms are actually bringing them business is the game you want to play.

There are search terms out there that make or break businesses every day just based on who is in the top slot or has won the featured snippet.

Taking that seriously and giving yourself permission to take your competitors on head on is the biggest step.

Then once that decision is made then there really isn’t an 80:20.

It then takes a strong investment of money and time into creating content that is significantly superior to what is currently being served to searchers. It means building a better, more dominant link profile to your pages. It means tracking, monitoring and obsessing about what moves the needle and building a consistent process around that to deliver each week.

Search can be fairly addictive and really fun but realize that there are people who feed their families on these terms and it should be treated like so.

There's a great talk with the Founder of Nerdwallet which I generally encourage most new startups to watch. Feel it's the most realistic description of "what it takes".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUwNgxwN_pE

Enjoy!

Put your blog on a subdirectory!

https://linkmink.com/blog > blog.linkmink.com

https://www.buttercms.com/blog/blog-subdomain-or-subdirectory-hint-one-is-40-better

I'd say sitemaps.

I have a couple of SEO focused websites and all of them worked great only after I sent the sitemap through Google Webmasters. It makes no sense, but the result is a lot better than I'd expected.

Some great advice here - I think most of what I was going to say has already been covered, so I'll give you these three more technical pointers:

• Make sure your site is as fast as is reasonably possible.

• Use responsive design to ensure visitors get a good experience regardless of device

• Implement https

As with almost all SEO advice, there are arguments over whether or not these affect ranking and to what degree - but regardless, there are secondary benefits which will, such as bounce rate, dwell time, etc. If someone lands on your website and has a bad experience, they will be back on Google sooner and that's a signal.

I like technical SEO wins, as the skillset required usually tallies with the skills available to those who have built their own web app.

Good luck!

A lot of valid Points!

dont forget to "build links" to your Page too. Think about partners who could link to you, try to do a PR campaign at least twice a year (backlinks from local newspapers or industry blogs are great too), try to engage in relationships with industry bloggers or companies in the area. Earn links over time...

Also what I found to be a good content marketing strategy is to categorize content into three buckets.

• evergreen findable content (high quality content, long term relevant, search engines like it, customers search for it, contains good keywords, Like how to, how can I, etc)

• sharable content (controversy, goes viral on social Media, is likely to be shared and talked about, Like 10 business lessons you can learn from Game of Thrones )

• linkable content (cool resources, things other bloggers or news outlets would link to, like statistics, Tools, knowledge, etc)

In my opinion the easiest thing to get right are basic on site SEO things, especially pictures.

1. Get your title and meta description right.

2. Make sure your text is well structured with bullet points and easily scannable

3. Get your images right. Right now your pictures have generic names like "brand-dashboard.png" and no alt-tags. That's a big nono SEO-wise.

4. Great informational site structure with well thought-out internal linking.

Especially picture SEO is a thing that is often overlooked in my opinion.

I wouldn't call anything off page related low hanging fruits because researching link opportunities is a pain in the ass and things like guest posting are very time consuming if done right.

If you need help, I'm more than happy to help. I love SEO

I would add some footer and header with relevant links to your own website. Also optimize the headers for social media. Here is a tool https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/sharing/

I don't have tons of experience with this but what I've noticed is that solving the problem or answering the question the searcher has is very important.

Essentially, if the searcher clicks your link and then does not go back to Google, it's great for your ranking.

A few things (other than all the awesome advice that's already shared)

• Try to build v/s pages - your product v/s competitor

• Backlinks (no brainer, but easiest one is finding dead-links and recommending your content)

• I recommend start putting out list of SAAS tools for "any niche") and then message them, so that they remember you (this can be done pretty quickly)

Best of luck :)

SEO is slow, so for a VERY early startup, the 100% of SEO that get divided into the 80/20 has a very low upside. This is true for the first X period of time, where the X will vary based on competition, how long you site has been around for as of today, and what you have previously done.

Given that SEO is such a low yielder at the start, the 20% that yields 80% of that low base is really just preparatory work for later on when SEO will become more important. So here is that 20% in my opinion:

0. (Like Asimov's 0th law of robotics): Choose a name that no one else ranks for in Google, or that people rank for by accident. Impassification is a (really bad) good example. If your name is unique enough, you should rank rather quickly for your name if you do some very basic stuff.

1. Do the ABSOLUTE basics with little to no thought (Time: 10 minutes)

• Have a home page title and description that describe what you do and includes your brand name.

• Choose a tag line for on-page that makes sense as keywordish description ("Easy Affiliate Management for companies using Stripe" is perfect)

• Install an analytics package.

2. Ask is SEO worth doing? (time: 20 minutes)

i . "Are people searching for what I do?" - sometimes, the answer is no, or not yet, e.g. SaaS Affiliate Management has very little search, and the stripe niche reduces that a little further.

ii. Ask is it super competitive? This case is affiliate related, so the answer is likely YES. If so, maybe shelve much more work and try other strategies first.

2A. Ask "is there an SEO opportunity here?" each time you do any marketing activity.

• If you plan to promote via your own blog, reach out to people you know who might share a link.

• If you post on some related site, like this Indie Hackers question, include a few links (like signup) and maybe offer a discount. it won't likely help your direct SEO, and while people might quibble here, SEO is getting your business found when people search, not just your site. If people search for a problem and they end up reading about your solution to their problem on some other site, to the point they want to visit your site and sign up, that is a good SEO plan. Getting them to your site directly from Google is clearly the holy grail, but initially having an intermediary like Indie Hackers ranking well for a topic isn't disastrous. Just make it super easy for people to get to your site and sign up. That, in a nutshell, is the affiliate model - get between sites and Google, for terms a site itself struggles to rank for (for whatever reason).

3. When SEO makes sense as the next marginal activity - and that point will come eventually - at that point, and no earlier, do a solid amount of research (time: 1 week at least) so that you have it all fresh in your head when you are ready to develop a plan.

i. Read this: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

ii. Read this: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building/tactics

iii. Meander through articles, taking some notes, and look for ideas that several people parrot, that you feel comfortable doing in the context of your business and skills, e.g. in this case there is a community of blogs and podcasts dedicated to the topic that could really help.

iv. Week two: make a plan, and implement a few ideas that you think will work.

v. Iterate.

Keyword research related topics in your niche, write up articles and optimize them. Add the first keyword after the first 200 words, second in the middle, and one more at the end. Add some LSI terms and some useful outbound links. Onpage SEO IS A MUST, so master that and you're already winning.

Interlinking is good, so link every once in a while from blog post to post. Blogging is gold if done correctly. Theres many popular websites that gain most traffic fron SEO.

Don't build backlinks, yes, you heard me right. Just write tons of good optimized guides, get them shared on social platforms thats about it. Google are not dumb and spot shitty links from a mile away.

My friend owns a massive blog he never builds links. What you need is: AUTHORITY as that's when Google will rank you.

Good luck.

Here are some low hanging fruits you can aim at:

• Do a quick keyword research through competitor's blogs and google keyword tools.

• Write exhaustive articles, make sure your keywords are in titles[h1] and somewhere in the relevant places across the articles. Include alt tags for images, and keep your urls really clean.

• Make sure you are a good 80+ on google page speed.

• Reach out to blogs and friends who could give you a backlink or two. [find what type of websites links to your competition and why approach them with better value proposition.]

• Do some guests posts on relevant blogs and get backlinks.

• Make sure you monitor everything from google webmaster tools and make tweaks as you learn from your efforts and results.

I hope this helps you.

Best of luck for launch!

Basically, give the user what they want.

1. research keyword

2. Use focus keyword meta title, meta disc, on page

3. Write great content which people will enjoy to read.

4. Wait.

5. Google can't ignore great content

You do not need to do anything for SEO right now. Just launch this and go back to building your product.

Right now you are not launching a website, you are launching a sign-up form Beta application. People are not going to search for that, and no search engine is going to rank it anywhere near interesting terms. So any energy spend on SEO would be moot.

Being that your current site is an application, not an accessible content website, to do this right would need a complete rewrite. For your next site, or blog, do be sure to check the source of the page. If you can not read the content, search engines will have problems indexing it. A simple thing you may want to do, is to change the page title. Right now this is simply: "LinkMink", and shows without any description in Google search results. Change to something like: "Affiliate Management for SaaS/Stripe Companies | LinkMink".

Do start thinking about your future content/online marketing strategy. Especially when it is your website that you'll use to get customers. Good products can and do fail without any online adoption (finding a right paid advertising model that works is expensive).

For SEO on a budget: Get a good Wordpress install with SEO and caching plugins. Hard to go wrong there.