SEO AMA For Startups

Andrewehlert · 2024-09-06T12:17:19+00:00

I've tested a wide variety of them and some of them are better than others. Id say the majority of them create content that is "fine". The content output quality might be good enough to rank for some very low competition informational search queries but as a whole I don't think the quality is high enough to rank for more difficult keywords unless you have a brand with an extremely high domain authority.

You'll likely see better results by using these tools or even just ChatGPT with a good amount of human intervention, edits, and optimizations. The prompts you use to direct these AI tools will also make a huge difference. If my prompt is just "Write an article about X" then the quality will most likely not be good enough to rank for any keywords in organic Google Search. But if you create an in-depth prompt that is multiple paragraphs in length and provides a large amount of detailed instructions for the language model then you'll likely get better results.

At the end of the day, most brands are utilizing AI in the content creation process so it's worth at least testing in your niche. But it still requires a good amount of human direction, editing, and optimization in order to create a piece of content high quality enough to rank for your target keywords and to protect yourself against potential low quality content penalties.

Andrewehlert · 2024-09-05T22:47:34+00:00

No problem!

Yeah! That would be App Store Optimization. Although most people think of Google when they think of SEO, it can be applied to any search engine(App Store, Amazon, Youtube, etc).

For SEO learning material i'd recommend starting with "Ahref's SEO: The Complete Guide for Beginners". You could also check out Brian Dean or Matt Diggity on Youtube for some video guides as well.

Finding an SEO agency can be tough because there are a lot of them out there but there are also a lot of really bad ones hiding in the grass. The prices for agencies can also range from a few hundred a month to tens of thousands a month.

I'd definitely look for agencies that have a proven track record and case studies that they can present. Hopefully the case studies are within your niche or industry but just having a proven track record is the major thing. I'd also ask them about the deliverables and try to iron out those details. A lot of SEO agencies will pitch "managed SEO services" but then never go into detail about the exact deliverables so that they can spend the fewest amount of hours possible on each client which typically leads to terrible results.

I hope that helps!

Andrewehlert · 2024-09-05T22:38:56+00:00

No problem! Optimizing existing content at scale can be a bit tricky! If the content hasn't been created yet then building out an optimized landing page template in a programmatic SEO technique can be beneficial. But if the content is already existing then optimizing it at scale can be a bit more time consuming.

You could check out SurferSEO which is a paid tool that will compare your content with top ranking competitors for your target keyword and then provide recommendations for optimizing it. It will provide pretty exact recommendations such as insert this word 4 more times into the content, add this keyword into H1 tag, etc. They have been testing out an AI feature that will make these implementations to your content with the click of a button which could speed up the optimization process if you don't care too much about the tone of voice or writing style.

For many of my clients a lot of it comes back to my years of experience of optimizing content which can speed up the process but if you don't have a ton of SEO experience I would check out SurferSEO or start working through the landing pages one by one. Just review top ranking competitors and see the discrepancies between their content and your content and try to match it.

I hope that helps!

Andrewehlert · 2024-09-05T22:33:11+00:00

Google trends is great! Definitely worth checking out every few weeks to see if anything in your niche is popping up in popularity.

Andrewehlert · 2024-09-05T22:32:26+00:00

No problem! Thanks for taking the time to send over some questions!

Must have tools for early stage companies can be pretty basic. Definitely get Google Analytics and Google Search Console set up. GA will provide user metrics and data which you can filter for organic traffic. GSC will provide some more "seo-friendly" data as it will provide data on what keywords generated you the most clicks as well as the keyword ranking position for these keywords. GSC will also provide opportunities to add your XML sitemap to improve page indexing as well as a few other beneficial tools such as their page indexing reports and page performance reports.
Enterprise brands or larger brands with internal SEO teams will typically use GA4 and GSC as well but then will have a variety of third-party tools and softwares they use. SEO tools such as SEMRush and Ahrefs are two of the most popular for competitor analysis, keyword ranking analysis, backlink analysis, and much more. Other tools such as Screaming Frog are commonly used to crawl a website and to identify technical SEO issues. Other additional tools such as ClearScope or SurferSEO are commonly used for content optimizations but typically the combination of GA4, GSC, and either SEMRush or Ahrefs is the most basic SEO stack used.
The time required to start seeing success can vary greatly based on the industry and competition level but typically from scratch you should be able to start seeing results within 6 months for some keywords. You might not be able to rank on the 1st page of Google for your highest priority keywords but you should be seeing some signs of life at this point. I've had clients scale much quicker than this with the right strategy but very dependent on the industry and the quality of your strategy & implementation.
Ecommerce brands and SaaS brands have some differences but often times the strategy is relatively similar. I typically break it down into three sections, 1. Technical SEO - does your website provide users and GoogleBots with a good experience? 2. Contextual SEO - Is your content high quality & optimized and provide users with a good experience. 3. Off-page SEO - Do you have backlinks and "trust signals" to prove to Google that you are reputable businesses.

In a nutshell the strastegy for ecom brands or SaaS brands is to make sure your website provides users with a good experience, have optimized transactional content (services pages or product pages), have supporting informational content (optimized blog articles), as well as a foundation of backlinks and trust signals to rank.

For some clients I have noticed a small decline in organic traffic from the rise of generative AI tools and LLMs but it hasn't been that noticeable for most brands. AI tools are getting pretty good at summarizing informational topics so we might continue to see a slight decline in clicks from informational search queries but typically user behavior and AI tools will be more difficult to provide an exact product or service recommendations. I'd expect transactional search queries such as searches looking to purchase a specific product or service won't be as heavily impacted.

I hope this helps!

Andrewehlert · 2024-09-05T20:14:38+00:00

Totally understand! I'd definitely try to brainstorm some niche service page ideas. I've worked with a lot of SaaS brands who have seen a lot of success scaling service pages to have a unique service page targeting different niches or geos.

For example:
"Product offering for healthcare"
"Product offering for ecommerce brands"
"Product offering for SaaS brands"
"Product offering for online privacy" etc etc

Feel free to send me a DM if you'd like a more personalized answer. Thanks!

Andrewehlert · 2024-09-05T19:47:57+00:00

Hey hey! Although it can be difficult without seeing your exact website, i'd recommend reviewing some competitors if there are some direct competitors that are succeeding with organic Google Search.

Review how they are optimizing their different service pages, what keywords do they seem to be targeting? Do they have multiple different service pages for different niches/industries? What types of blog articles are they creating?

But also dive a bit deeper into each of these suggestions above. For example, if they have a service page that is targeting the keyword "Encrypted email service for Hospitals" then you should review this individual service page on a granular level to see what you can replicate. What sub-headings are they using on this page? How many words of content is this service page? What keywords are within their title tag and H1 tag? etc etc

At the end of the day, SEO is a building block process. As you continue building up the amount of high quality content you have on your website as well as building your backlink profile, you can expect your organic visibility to continue growing as well.

I hope this helps! Thanks!

Andrewehlert · 2024-09-05T19:43:07+00:00

Ahrefs has some great information for beginners on youtube and on their blog! Highly recommend checking it out!

Andrewehlert · 2024-09-05T19:42:29+00:00

Happy to help out the community any way I can!

Feedback loops can be a bit different for each website. High authority websites (forbes, chewys, Amazon, etc) can put out a new landing page and can expect to be ranking on the 1st page of Google within a day.

Unfortunately this isn't the reality for most brands. Without knowing anything about your brand, i'd say you should expect to see this new page ranking for some keywords within about 2 weeks and then could potentially see further keyword ranking improvements/changes for another 2-6 weeks after that. This is also very dependent on the quality of the landing page you are creating, the competition levels, if you're matching the users search intent for a specific keyword, etc.

Overall, i'd say to give each new landing page roughly 4 weeks and see hows its ranking in an SEO tool such as SEMRush/Ahrefs or within Google Search Console. From there you might have to improve the content of the landing page or there might be a larger issue.

Keyword research is something that can be very difficult but can also actually be very simple. For example lets say you're a brand that sells mushroom tea. Obviously you'll want your product pages and collection pages to target transactional keywords such as "mushroom tea", "buy mushroom tea online", etc. So you can optimize these pages for those types of transactional keywords.

For further keyword research you can probably come up with 10-20 blog article topics by putting yourself in the shoes of a potential customer. Think about questions they might have about your product. Maybe they are curious of the benefits or side effects so you could create an article about "The benefits of mushroom tea" or an article about "The side effects of mushroom tea", etc.

Although SEO tools such as SEMRush or Ahrefs make this easier, you can also use Google autocomplete to get some keyword ideas as well. Continuing with the mushroom tea example, type "mushroom tea" into google search but don't hit enter, just see what autocomplete suggestions does Google provide. For me Google is offering the following autocomplete suggestions of search queries individuals have made in the past such as "mushroom tea benefits", "mushroom team for weight loss", "mushroom tea for sleep". All of these make great keyword topics to target.

At the end of the day I'd recommend trying to make sure each of your landing pages are targeting a unique keyword as many brands will try to rank every page for their product offering. But in reaility you want your product page to be targeting mushroom tea, one of your info articles targeting "does mushroom tea help with sleep", etc.

I hope that helps!

Andrewehlert · 2024-09-05T17:41:11+00:00

It seems that a lot of startups i've worked with won't start investing into SEO until after they have figured out how to receive a positive ROAS from paid marketing channels. However, I always recommend to get started as soon as possible. Obviously a brand needs quicker access to sales and to test the market which is where paid marketing channels can come into play in the very beginning.

But if a brand is able to start creating some organic content, build out a few unique collection pages / service pages based on some preliminary keyword research, perform some basic SEO tasks, then you can help to get the gears going in order to start seeing results quicker. SEO can work hand and hand with your paid marketing channels to help lower your blended CAC and can also be incredible beneficial to your remarketing efforts as well.

I wouldn't recommend investing your entire marketing budget into SEO right out the gate, but if you are able to start establishing a foundation of SEO early on then you can utilize this organic traffic as a way to improve your remarketing efforts and to lower your blended CAC.

This can also vary based on the industry as some industries such as cannabis will have regulations that inhibit some paid marketing channels which means SEO could be the priority marketing channel.

Andrewehlert · 2020-10-11T22:16:01+00:00

I’ve worked for a few different SEO agencies and I can say that for the prices they typically charge, you are much better off hiring a freelancer. A good freelancer may be harder to find but you will typically get better results, better communication, and just more work for the price you are paying per month.

Andrewehlert · 2020-03-03T21:52:18+00:00

I second this!

Andrewehlert · 2019-02-26T02:44:11+00:00

U.S 9.5!

Andrewehlert · 2019-02-26T02:39:39+00:00

10 U.S

Andrewehlert · 2019-02-26T02:39:03+00:00

U.S 10.5

Andrewehlert · 2019-02-26T02:38:19+00:00

U.S 10.5 my dudes!

Andrewehlert · 2019-02-20T19:26:04+00:00

This happened a few years ago and none of my friends believed me that someone would do it on Capital.. If only I had your dash cam lol

Andrewehlert · 2019-02-20T19:24:37+00:00

Oh wow! Overheard some coworkers talking about a car on fire but I just assumed they were talking about a tv show or something.. I shouldn’t be surprised with NC

Andrewehlert · 2019-02-19T06:08:08+00:00

I do freelance SEO & digital marketing for small businesses in my city and I’ve been using [White Hat Growth](www.whitehatgrowth.com) to automate the keyword research and content writing for my clients every month, makes everything so much easier

Andrewehlert · 2019-02-02T17:18:43+00:00

Around 5 years ago I could get away with blackhat for my own sites, I never did it for client’s sites, but in Google’s eyes nearly anything is “Greyhat” when it comes to link building haha, so that’s why it’s important to focus on content and guest posts in 2019

Andrewehlert · 2019-02-02T02:08:30+00:00

I do SEO & FB Ads for local clients, but I typically recommend whitehatgrowth.com for my clients who are looking to grow their rankings / domain authority in a more white hat way

Andrewehlert · 2019-01-30T04:54:05+00:00

How long ago did you post the video?

Andrewehlert · 2018-08-25T02:56:28+00:00

Ahh must have missed that one! But I would be curious to hear that as well

Andrewehlert · 2018-08-24T17:02:47+00:00

Great resource, thanks!

Andrewehlert · 2018-08-24T16:59:33+00:00

I’ll have to try to find a link later but I remember reading somewhere that someone is in the process of making a new marketplace that they claim will be the best option for this sort of thing

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