Dedicating a healthy portion of your marketing budget to SEO is your ticket to startup success.
And I mean that quite literally.
After helping hundreds of startups rank content and build authority, I’ve seen first-hand what a digital marketing strategy can do for a new business.
Here are seven reasons digital marketing is a MUST for your startup.
1. It works
Marketers bet on SEO because of the hard results we’ve seen.
50% of marketing professionals said search engine optimization (SEO) had a large positive impact on marketing performance and goals at their organizations in 2022. More than four out of five noted a general positive impact.
With the right strategy, SEO can generate relevant traffic to your site that you can automate into sales and customers. And that makes it an invaluable marketing channel for your startup.
Emphasis on “the right strategy”.
Building topical authority with relevant backlinks and tailoring your approach based on performance has to be a top priority.
At uSERP, we’ve seen time and time again that authority and reiteration win above all else.
You can have the best content in the world — but if you don’t have authority, you won’t get traffic. And if you’re not performance-driven, you’ll fail to outrank competitors.
Authority changes the game. It sets you up as an industry leader, drives a ridiculous amount of traffic to your site, and helps you rank within the top three to five spots (forget the top 10).
This gives your brand ample opportunities to grab potential clients and customers in your sleep.
More on authority in a bit.
2. YOU own your blog and website
MySpace came and went — and many other social media channels have faded into existence, too.
That’s a big problem when you’re a content creator.
You can’t afford to lose the content you worked so hard for to an algorithm or a buyout. Plus, social media platforms technically own your content, which comes with its own risks and consequences.
But when you invest in SEO, you’re investing money back into your business. You’re investing in a website that’ll always be there — unless you decide to sell it or take it down one day.
This prevents content and traffic loss and helps you pull in rich data about your ideal customer that’s yours to keep.
And while social media followings can grow, too, scaling your website can pay off for years to come. With evergreen content, topical authority, and aligned search intent, your site can capitalize on its own success indefinitely.
In fact, some of the client pages uSERP builds links to are several years old. This isn’t by accident.
Our clients are already seeing massive success with these pages, so why not capitalize on that to build more authority faster?
3. Generate brand awareness
Getting the word out about your startup is crucial to promoting its success and making sure your brand has a chance from the get-go.
With SEO, you can make a name for yourself without relying on expensive ad campaigns. It’s also one of the only ways you can attract organic traffic to your website.
Still — no matter what industry you’re in — you’re competing with endless brands that have robust content marketing strategies. Some of these brands have 50+ people producing content, managing SEO strategies, and measuring results.
In other words, you’re up against the big boys. And if you want to compete in dominated spaces, you need more ways to generate brand awareness.
The good news is, there are a few tricks you can use to swoop in and claim your slice of the SEO market share.
One of the simplest ways is by targeting long-tail keywords with low competition.
Where there are fewer competitors, there are more opportunities for you to rank.
The more competitors you’re up against, the harder you’re going to have to work to earn high-ranking spots.
Ranking anywhere close to the top 10 search results will also be next to impossible if you don’t have website authority and you’re competing against sites with high authority.
4. Attract organic traffic
Your website should be your top sales tool.
If you can attract the right people to your website consistently, you can scale your product or solution to the moon. And this is probably one of my favorite things about SEO. There’s really no limit to how much success you can create for yourself.
Piggybacking on my previous point, visibility is everything. If you can rank high and encourage people to click on your links, you have a recipe for organic sales.
And this is where click-through rate (CTR) strategies come in.
Ranking in the top 10 is no longer high enough to attract significant organic traffic. With Google’s featured snippets and AI search results crowding the results page, only the top three to five positions are highly visible.
In other words, to encourage higher CTRs, you need great copywriting to give your target market a motive to visit your site.
You can do this by differentiating your headlines from competitors’ and making them sound interesting and captivating. (Hint: Revamping someone else’s title doesn’t help you stand out.)
But you can’t stop at the title.
Redirect the user to your site immediately upon clicking on your link. When they land on your site, it needs to load quickly and provide the solution to their problem above the fold. Never bury the lead.
If they’re not confident you can help them within a few seconds, expect higher bounce rates.
5. Capitalize on search intent
People are already searching for topics your business specializes in — so you may as well bring them to your website to answer their queries.
In fact, Google processed more than 14 million searches in January 2024 alone.
This is especially important in the SaaS space.
When someone needs a grammar checker, productivity tool, or project management platform, they head straight to Google to search for one.
They’re not checking newspapers or asking friends. They’re looking online.
This means, if your startup is in the SaaS industry, you’re missing out on tremendous growth potential if you don’t include SEO in your marketing budget.
Plus, SaaS searchers need strategic sales funnel content to nurture conversions.
They need resources they can read and watch to learn:
- Why your solution is better than your competitors’
- How to integrate it into their current tech stack
- How it’ll help them reach their goals
- How to get started using it
- What your solution does
- Why you made it
- How it works
SEO gives you the outlet to create these resources. From optimized guides to full-blown knowledge bases to tutorial videos, expert assets help you build trust, encourage trials, and convert freemium users to paid plan customers.
6. Generate qualified leads
Your website is the perfect channel to nudge searchers into your lead nurturing funnel or conversion path.
As long as …
- Your content marketing strategy is in line with your target audience’s needs and pain points
- Your website has relevant lead magnets and calls to action (CTA) throughout
These searchers are typically highly qualified for your business — if they didn’t need your solution, they probably wouldn’t have asked Google about it.
That’s why it’s pivotal to take advantage of the time they’re on your site by inviting them to continue the conversation (or buy something).
Think funnel stages.
For instance, you need options for top, middle, and bottom-of-the-funnel prospects.
Here are some examples:
- Top-of-the-funnel leads: Introductory blog posts, like “What is a grammar checker” and invitations to join your email marketing newsletter for more insights.
- Middle-of-the-funnel prospects: Tool comparison articles, software reviews, and CTAs to book a demo.
- Bottom-of-the-funnel prospects: Case studies, white papers, and in-depth guides — along with opportunities to try a free plan, trial, or score a discount.
There’s a caveat here, though.
Make sure to have a lead nurturing plan and a solid onboarding experience before setting up your lead magnets and CTAs.
To encourage potential customers to give you a try, they need to build trust with your new business. This means having segmented emails ready to go so you can consistently nurture them according to their unique pain points.
To encourage new customers to upgrade to a paid plan or stick around, their customer experience needs to be epic. If it’s annoying, complex, or lengthy to get started using your solution, you’ll struggle to keep them.
You can also optimize gated lead magnet assets (like ebooks and guides) and create SEO landing pages for them.
Users directed to these need to enter an email address to download your assets.
These can live off and on your website — but make sure they integrate into your overarching SEO content strategy. You can also set up ads to these or sprinkle them as CTAs throughout your blog posts.
7. Build authority in your industry
I saved the best reason for last.
The right digital marketing plan gives your brand the competitive edge it needs to build authority.
And authority in SEO is EVERYTHING.
While high-quality content is important to building trust with your audience, it’s not enough to encourage Google to boost your domain authority (DA) score. Google wants social proof that you’re an expert.
It wants *other sites with high DA scores* to reference your site as a trusted source. It also wants to see do-follow links — not no-follow. This signals to Google that it’s safe and relevant for the reader to head to the linked site.
The more do-follows you get from authoritative sites, the higher your authority score will be.
While Google says it prioritizes valuable content, the following example makes it clear … authority wins. Every time.
The post below ranks #2 for “best printer”. The content sucks — but The Verge has enough backlinks and site authority that it doesn’t matter.
In other words …
Once you build authority, you can pretty much post whatever you want and it’ll rank high. (Not that you should — but, you get my drift.)
At uSERP, we still prioritize producing valuable content for our clients because it encourages authoritative sites to accept our guest posts. Even long after our clients have built high authority, we still produce subject-matter expert content to continue scaling links.
We also focus on the long haul (though most of our clients see fast results).
By acquiring authoritative backlinks over time, our clients’ authority and competitiveness, gradually and consistently improves.
Acquiring quality backlinks and building authority also helps our clients:
- Build trust with their target customers
- Generate brand awareness
- Attract more organic traffic
- Generate qualified leads
- Boost their reputations
- Remain memorable
But don’t depend on your in-house SEO team to build your backlinking strategy unless it’s their specialty.
It takes a team grounded in backlink expertise to score quality links ethically — like uSERP.
My team’s objective with SEO? Help you produce an ROI in line with your business goals and ambitions.
We want you to MAKE money with SEO. With our SEO power plays, we know the exact strategy your business needs to follow to build authority and rank high.
Book a 30-min intro call with me now to learn more.
We’ll chat about your business, organic growth goals, and how we can drive success via SEO and link building.
As the number one ranked link building company by Growth Ramp, Single Grain, and Codeless, you can trust that you’re in good hands. Plus, our clients love us, too.
Wrap up
I could talk about reasons to invest in SEO for days, but I’ll leave you with these seven.
The bottom line? Your startup NEEDS an SEO strategy if you want any chance at creating a strong digital presence.
Invest in backlinks now, or get ready to pay for the consequences later.
I’ll show you the way. Let’s chat and get your new business on the map.
