From Zero to Searchable: Building SEO from Scratch for New Startups

1. Why SEO Still Matters (Even Early On)

Let’s address the elephant in the room, is SEO dead?. No, it’s just evolving.

What’s constant? People need information to make a purchase. You have the information for them to make an informed purchasing decision.

What’s changing? The platform and medium changes. It keeps evolving. Before Google, people used to consume information to guide their purchase through newspapers, pamphlets, direct mails, and TV commercials. Google simply changed the way people consumed information, i.e. people started getting information on-demand not like noise.

We are in the similar age, where GPT’s now taking it to the next level. They enable people to get more contextual information which is most relevant to them. Google tried for years now, but they had their challenges as they tried to solve it through the search engine paradigm. The context they are able to add is your past search behaviour, location, interest, and other demographic data.

But GPT’s changed the game where they added a conversation layer on top of search engines. So instead of listing all pages, they started summarizing the answer for the user based on the context they get from the user. Google assumed the context, but GPT is getting context in real-time directly from the user. Where the queries got longer than people used in search engines.

The user behavior is slowly changing where it is becoming natural for users to add more information to a query. For example, instead of search ‘best crm’ or ‘best mobile’ or ‘cheap mobiles’, they are adding more context to it,

For CRM,

‘What is the best crm software for a growing startup with 2-3 sales people’

For Mobiles,

‘Best mobile for college student and i will use it for gaming and videos’

These long queries were always there but only by pro users. But, now users are starting to adopt it as a default behaviour as they know the accuracy of GPT response depends upon the information they give. So they either give it as a single query or through multiple conversations.

So the way people query and how they get answers have evolved. But in this entire mix, the people querying for information and the content to satisfy the user informational need are going to be there.

Since we addressed the most hot questions, let’s see other myths that are here even before GPT days.

Common myths

SEO is a later-stage channel

SEO takes time to gain results, so you can’t leave it until it’s late. Investing on SEO very early will help you gain momentum and start seeing results when you need it the most. Basically, it’s like having a head start. For paid channels, all you need is money to spend and get in front of the audience. But for SEO, you need to put in the effort to build authority and credibility for your website which you can’t buy and takes time.

SEO is only for PLG

There is a common misconception that you need to focus on SEO only for product-led GTM motion. But irrespective of your growth motion, it’s always good to have inbound inquiries coming for your product.

SEO is not for Enterprise

Most people think SEO is only when you target the SMB segment. Since, the enterprise segment’s purchasing decisions are made through committees and relationship building they think SEO is irrelevant. But, still the enterprise executives use search to satisfy their informational needs. Each one of them tries to do their own research before sharing their opinion on the purchasing decision. One of the key sources of information for them is Google or GPT’s (now) along with other sources like industry reports, consultant presentations, and analysts reviews. So investing in SEO will help you to get in front of them even before they make the purchasing decision. If they find your blog or website more resourceful, it will help to build credibility for your brand and get a yes when your sales person talks to them.

The Sustainability Test

One simple reason to invest in SEO is, it is sustainable. Unlike, paid where your cost of customer acquisition is always on the rise. SEO is like you set, maintain, and reap the rewards forever. It is a sustainable channel for you to gain profitability. Your CAC is 500x lower than the other channels.

2. Understanding What to Rank For

Search intent > keywords volume

The user intent always precedes the search volume of a query. Why? Understanding why someone is searching using a specific query helps you to know what is their expectation and where they are in their purchasing journey.

Search Intents

Intents are broadly categorised into 4 types: informational, navigational, investigational, and transactional.

Informational

People try to learn about a topic or a thing. These queries include terms like ‘what is’, ‘how to’, ‘definition’, and ‘meaning’.

Investigational

These are queries used to understand more about a topic or things. It usually includes terms like ‘best’, ‘top’, ‘alternatives’, ‘product A vs product B’.

Transactional

Queries that contain a brand name or ‘product category + software/systems/tools’. People use transactional queries when they want to evaluate or purchase a service, or software.

Why is it important?

We can directly connect the marketing funnel to the intent.

• ToFU > Informational
• MoFu > Investigational
• BoFU > Transactional

The keyword search volume for information queries are usually high compared to investigational and transactional.

• CRM: 201,000
• Best crm software: 33,100
• Salesforce crm: 27,100
• Salesforce price: 18,100

So, when you see this it is natural to think ranking for ‘crm’ will bring more traffic. But the objective of ranking should be conversions and not traffic. Because traffic doesn’t generate revenue, but conversions. Unless you are owning a media website and rely on ads revenue.

How to identify what your users are searching for

Conversations with users

Talking to your customers and prospects can help you understand how they articulate their pain points and problem statements. That will give you insight into their informational need and how they would actually search in google when they get a need to know about your product or services.

Communities (Reddit, Slack, Discord)

Communities are a great channel to understand about your target audience. By observing the questions they ask and their conversations, you can learn their informational needs in each stage of their buying journey.

Free tools: Google Autocomplete, AlsoAsked, AnswerThePublic

Tools like autocomplete, also asked, and answer the public are goldmine where they capture the frequent queries used by people related to your product category.

This can help you understand two important things,

1. What topics/information is most sorted about by your target audience.
2. How they are likely to search for it.

3. Setting the Foundation

Before you can go and rank any pages, you need to have that page hosted and google should know your website exists. So there are prerequisites that need to be taken care of.

Picking the right CMS

Your pages need to live somewhere, and that somewhere is your CMS. Content management systems help you manage and host your website. Picking the right CMS is important. There are multiple CMS available like: wordpress, webflow, framer, and HubSpot. Based on your technical level, your goals, and budget you can pick the one that fits the bill for you.

On-page SEO basics

Google learns and understands your website very differently from a human. As a human, you understand by seeing and listening. But Google understands pages by the HTML classes. So, without going deep, the meta level information to help you get started I will share the most important attributes and why it matters.

Titles, H1s, URLs, alt text

• Titles are the website topic/headline. It tells Google what the page is about.
• H Tags: The heading hierarchy is H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6. It helps Google understand what comes within which heading. Basically grouping the information.
• Alt text: It helps Google to understand images. So when you have a cat image unless you add ‘cat’ as alt text, Google won’t know whether that is a cat or dog image.

So these are some basic elements you need to take care of when you write an article or landing page.

Sitemap

Once you have CMS set up and website ready, the next thing is to make it easy for Google to read your website. The simplest way is to submit a sitemap to Google. So how to do it?

Google Search Console setup

Google offers you a free tool to help you track your website performance in the search. To do that you need to connect your domain and add your sitemap to it.

It gives you insights about: Impressions, clicks, position you ranked, queries you showed up, and pages that are ranking.

4. Your First 10 Pages: What to Create

Landing pages with intent

To begin with you start creating pages for your product, use cases, personas, and industries. This will help Google to understand better about your website. Also, it will help you get high intent traffic.

Comparison pages: [Competitor] vs [Your tool]

If you’re entering an established category then the best content to create is comparison articles. This will help you bring in quality traffic while leveraging your well established competitors’ brand equity.

Foundational blog posts

If you’re entering a new category without established competitors, its better to focus on the information intent content. Basically covering ‘what is’ and ‘how to’ topics. For e.g.

• “What is [category]”
• “How to solve [pain point]”
• “Best way to [job to be done]”

Even in established categories, it will help you build authority for your website. So focus on it once you are done with the landing pages, and competitor pages.

Free Tools

Another way to capture high intent traffic is to build and publish free micro tools that your target audience will search for. It could be a simple feature in your product, but could help your users perform a ‘job to be done’. For e.g. canva’s color palette, ahref’s DA checker, ‘hootsuite’s caption generator’.

It will help you to attract audiences who are facing the problem but trying to solve alternatives with manual work. When their pain gets severe, you would be the most likely brand to reach as they would have built an affinity with you through the free tools.

5. Getting Content Indexed and Discoverable

Once you publish your article, you need to ensure it’s discoverable and indexed by Google.

Submitting to Search Console

Easiest way to get indexed is submitting your page to google through the Search console. You can do it by following the below steps.

Internal linking

Internal links solve multiple purposes, but the primary purpose is to show Google that your pages are part of one big website rather than standalone pages. It helps google to recognize you as an expert and authority when you have multiple pages in the same topic interconnected. Basically, when you internally link your pages, it will understand that a page is part of a book rather than a single page.

It also helps google to find other pages to crawl and index from one page.

Light backlink tactics (launch posts, guest posts, directories)

Backlink would be the last thing you might want to focus on. Most startups get scammed by backlink agencies and SEO’s that backlink will help them improve ranking. But unless you have quality content with basic SEO done, getting any number of backlinks won’t help you. In the early days, you can simply focusing on adding in relevant review websites, directories, and do guest posts in blogging platforms. This might not have direct SEO impact, but it will help you establish yourself as a genuine product in the eyes of Google when it finds your name in multiple websites.

Sharing in relevant communities (without spamming)

Again this isn’t about SEO, but helps you engage with the community so people might get to learn about you. Instead of being salesly, you can share useful content for relevant user questions in communities, so they get to know you and build credibility for your brand if they like the content.

6. Tracking What Works (and What Doesn’t)

In the early days, you didn’t want to invest in high cost tools like ahrefs and SEMrush. Because they will be helpful only after you hit a certain threshold in terms of visitors.

Also, in the early stage you need to track the foundational things like, how many articles you published, how many indexed, how many impressions, clicks, and what positions. This could be done through Google search console itself.

Iterating on what’s ranking

Once your pages are indexed and start to show up in search results, you can monitor and review what makes the pages ranking in the top 10 to rank there. Make hypotheses and continue to optimize your website content and structure.

7. What Not to Waste Time On (Yet)

Skipping advanced technical SEO

Most CMS comes with basic technical SEO parts covered, so don’t worry too much about the advanced technical SEO. Just Focus on:

• Fast-loading pages
• Clean URLs
• Indexable content

Not worrying about domain authority early

As a new website, your domain authority is going to be Zero, don’t get obsessed with it. As long as you publish content, get indexed, and it starts receiving impressions. You are good, just keep your heads down and focus on doing the basics right.

Avoiding over-optimization or keyword stuffing

You will get penalized if you over optimize your page. A rookie mistake people make is littering the page with the targeted keyword as over the page. Google is smart now, it can semantically understand content. So don’t stuff your article with keywords, let it have natural occurrence.

8. Wrapping Up: Your First 90 Days SEO Game Plan

30-day plan: Setup and research

In the first 30 days, you focus on,

• Understanding the topics your target audience care about
• Keywords people use to search related to your product
• Domain, CMS, and website set up.

60-day plan: First 5–10 content pieces

Map topics to the keyword and start publishing content.

90-day plan: Promotion + review + update

Once you have published a good amount of articles, start monitoring its performance and optimize the content to improve the ranking.