SEO is incredibly frustrating
Am I alone in feeling that SEO is extremely difficult?
I've spent hours and hours reading and watching videos on how SEO works, best practices, tips, platforms to use, what to avoid, etc. and I'm continually flummoxed at what to do beyond the bare minimum.
There's so much info out there but it just feels impractical when you're a solo founder that doesn't have loads of cash to throw around. On top of that, I read all the time about how Google is changing its guidelines and that your techniques need to change. Staying on top of SEO changes is like a full-time job.
Oftentimes these frustrations make me avoid marketing altogether, which I know I can't do. So much of SEO feels gimmicky and I want to avoid that.
I know SEO is a long game. But it seems like my efforts never pay off like others saying "I went from 0 to 20,000 users in 10 months!!" I can't spend thousands on SEO tools (yet) but would love to improve beyond the plateau I'm sitting on.
Does anyone else feel this way? Anyone have any advice, resources, or inexpensive tools they'd recommend?
Thanks for your help!
After 19,314 lines of code, i'm shutting down my project
Need feedback for my product.
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I've analyzed all 450+ founder interviews on Indie Hackers (see Zero to Users for more details) and found that the #1 most-mentioned acquisition was channel was SEO. But with a twist.
Most indie hackers found success with SEO as a RESULT of another acquisition channel working for them (such as press or blogging on other websites). Focusing on those channels brought them users, as well as links (which are the most important factor for SEO), which in turn got Google to rank them higher.
What was interesting is that almost nobody focused on doing channels such as press or doing guest blogging to increase their search traffic. Those founders focused on press/guest blogging as a way to get more users. Many were even surprised and noticed accidentally that search traffic started bringing them paying users.
So if you want to focus on SEO & acquiring users at the same time, my recommendation is to focus on channels where the direct result is a) getting potential users, and the indirect result is b) getting valuable links which would cause Google to rank you higher for more relevant phrases. Some of these channels include (as I previously mentioned): press, posting on other blogs (with relevant traffic), getting included in resource pages (more on this later), etc.
Also, you're making one big assumption by focusing on SEO: You think that search traffic will bring you paying users.
Are you sure about this?
One way to test this assumption is to spend some money on Google Ads (nowadays you have free coupons which should give you Ads credits to get started) bidding for your keywords.
Another way is to try to "integrate" yourself into sites that already rank for your target phrases. For example, you might have a team collaboration SaaS and there's a blog post ranking for "team collaboration tools" that lists 10 tools similar to yours. Asking the blog owner to include you there for a week in exchange for something is much more time/money-efficient than spending months trying to rank for that phrase and eventually finding that it brings no paying users.
Hope this helped.
Really great comment. I totally concur — a few backlinks with a high authority score did more for our SEO than multiple months of content creation. The key is surely compounding those two components. Churn out high quality content when you can, but put more focus on acquiring good buzz around your product.
Hi there! I'm trying to build a tool for the SEO space as I also feel like it is quite frustrating. You seem like a knowledgeable person on the subject and I'd love to have a chat with you to understand where you see the space is lacking the most. If you feel like it, book a time with me here: https://calendly.com/franco-abtestingai/seo-rant
Hi Franco, I'm actually not super knowledgable in this space, but I appreciate you reaching out. I'm heads-down right now building V2 of my site, so I don't have much time over the next few weeks.
Best of luck with your tool, though! Just tossed you a follow. Hope to see you reach success.
Nice tips ! Thanks 🙌
Nice tips! Very useful, thanks for sharing.
Hi there! I'm trying to build a tool for the SEO space as I also feel like it is quite frustrating. You seem like a knowledgeable person on the subject and I'd love to have a chat with you to understand where you see the space is lacking the most. If you feel like it, book a time with me here: https://calendly.com/franco-abtestingai/seo-rant
Great comment thanks @zerotousers !
A quick one regarding backlinks. I've been approached multiple times for backlink exchanges but I'm not sure what to think about them.
Some are from random websites, others are from good ones in the same industry as us.
I do understand contextual relevance matters, but at the same time it is tempting to just say yes to all :)
Thoughts?
Hi there! I'm trying to build a tool for the SEO space as I also feel like it is quite frustrating. You seem like a knowledgeable person on the subject and I'd love to have a chat with you to understand where you see the space is lacking the most. If you feel like it, book a time with me here: https://calendly.com/franco-abtestingai/seo-rant
This comment was deleted 8 months ago.
Thanks for sharing!
For now I did follow your advice and treated it carefully as quite a few requests I get are relatively sketchy (unfortunately...).
Happy scaling
This is useful
thanks
Super helpful! THANKS
Wow! Thank you so much for this. This is probably the best advice I've heard about SEO!
Thanks, @zerotousers. That's a great point. I have been assuming that search traffic will ultimately bring me paying customers.
I like the approach you mention about integrating myself with sites. Do you have any advice on how to approach those blog owners? Are they usually receptive to such requests? Thanks again!
It really depends I think on how often they get "flooded" with emails.
I think the key is to make the request small, first ask if there's a possibility to do that in the first place (many websites may be really hard to edit). Then mention you're open to striking some sort of a deal. Also maybe mention that you're looking to be there for a week or so because, as they know, ranking for a keyword takes months and you don't know whether working months to rank there would be worth it.
That makes sense. Sounds good and thank you!
Link outreach is the most difficult part of SEO. A systematic approach can work.
First build a list of prospective sites that already link to other sites and are closely related to your product.
Then email them one by one. Don't sent an identical email. Look for spelling mistakes, broken links, bugs on the site as an opener. Offer some value to them for free, then follow up asking for a link.
Ideally they will have a perfect page and place for you to request the link. If they don't, you can even suggest writing a post for them for free as a guest post.
And yeah this all takes a lot of time and energy with often very low response rates.
For any other link building tips, I started another thread.
Hi there! I'm trying to build a tool for the SEO space as I also feel like it is quite frustrating. You seem like a knowledgeable person on the subject and I'd love to have a chat with you to understand where you see the space is lacking the most. If you feel like it, book a time with me here: https://calendly.com/franco-abtestingai/seo-rant
Here are a few tips and resources that might help:
Oh dear, it never works. Before starting Keyword Research you have to raise your DR to 20, build strong backlinks profile to be at bit noticeable for search engine
Everyone in the SEO space will try to sell you something - I think the best way is to focus on making great content and spend even more time promoting it to your audience/target audience. The rest will come automagically!
Ain't that the truth! I feel like there are soooo many sales gimmicks. Some sites just make me cringe.
I'll go against the grain here. Forget about SEO. This is mostly just a marketing con. Here's why:
As a solo founder, you probably don't have a lot of time on your hands. You should focus on generating sales now.
Worst case, use money from those sales to pay for ads to drive traffic.
It’s definitely not a marketing con.
was just about to say
Why is it not a marketing con?
There are tons of startups who get most of their traffic thanks to it.
The fact that they get most of their traffic thanks to SEO doesn't mean it's not a con.
Especially when starting, it's a cost of opportunity. What will bring the biggest ROI.
The money that will come from SEO is at least 6-12 months away. If you focus on direct sales, it could be 0-2 months away. You can use that money to grow further, using Ads, Promotions, setup affiliate campaigns. Pay for influencer campaigns. Partner offer bundles with entrepreneurs in the same space.
I'm not saying SEO is a total waste of time and money. It has value. But it's not worth the hype everyone gives to it. If you have the resources to content creation and marketing, fine, go for it.
But not before you've marketed and validated your product. Not before you have resources to dedicate to it. Not before you've grown your social media presence and interact a lot with your users.
Leads from Social media will most likely convert better than internet traffic.
So will leads from referrals.
just because you don't understand it doesn't mean its a con. seo is very real.
I think the point is that SEO has to be viewed in terms of trade-offs when allocating time, money, and energy. Specifically in the beginning. Everyone knows it's real, hence the 'N things to do in 2022' or '6 tips for Y' links wouldn't be a thing. Sadly SEO is too effective, but perhaps not as effective when you are just starting out, or when your market is niche. In a niche you can be a leader simply by doing something no one else does using long-tail keywords. So many factors at play.
I agree with martdi!
For the most part with a SaaS, unless if you've done some significant content marketing on targeted keywords, you're going to rank for the product name and that's about it. As you grow and add content, you'll rank for more keywords over time, but I'll bet your number one keyword is still going to be the name of your product.
Look at things this way:
SEO is basically a game of whackamole. I run a totally separate authority site (different from my SaaS product) and the process is to basically find the holes my competitors aren't filling (from a keyword perspective) and how I can outdo them by providing more value. Lots of content marketing, lots of writing.
For a SaaS, especially one just starting up, it's a different kind of grind.
All it takes is one influential person to really help spread the word about your product.
It can be a power user who is incredibly passionate about your product, or a partner who is equally passionate about your mission. Either way, your focus should be more on opportunities for locating these power users, partners, or influential individuals, and starting a conversation.
Eventually you'll find individuals who share your passion for your product and your vision. These are the relationships you want to focus on. These are the people that will really help you grow.
Before working on my current product, I worked for a fairly well known public SaaS company in the Bay area. They really didn't give a hoot about SEO. Marketing revolved entirely around partnerships, branding, and developer relations (a big part of their product was the API)
Yeah have to disagree with you. It's not a con. As attributed by the top comment, listen to ANY indiehacker podcast or bootstrapped podcast, the founder will say SEO is one of the primary reasons for success.
Yes you do need to have OTHER ways to grow traffic, you can't just depend on SEO, just like you can't paid ads.
And for sure SEO will take 6 months to reflect, but depends, are you in long term or not? If you are you make long term investments.
Do both, SEO + something else, but definitely do SEO.
@martdi I agree
I always appreciate a counterpoint of view. Thanks for sharing this.
My business is entirely build on SEO.
SEO is a longterm strategy. You need to think 1-2 years ahead in terms of your time investment. So, if you are looking to get customers tomorrow then SEO is not your friend.
And, this is actually good news (!) since many companies are not patient enough for this. This makes SEO an open field for anyone willing to invest longterm.
I do evergreen content, and stay away from anything that doesn't age well on my site.
Give people the answers they are looking for on your website, and give them reasons to come back to your site. If you can make something useful that people would link to on their own website or via social media - then your website gains authority. With authority you will be able to rank more and more 'quickly' on new topics. You've created a flywheel, hopefully.
Try to google "cornerstone strategy", and build your content around this. 'Keyword analysis' and building your content (/website) around this cornerstone is key. Also, always have the business model of Google in the back of your mind: They want their users to have good experiences. So, if they list you at the 1st page then Google expect that you provide them with a "1st page" experience - so, do it better then everyone else on the 1st page at a given result.
Trick for backlinks: Check out linkbuilding experts own website for backlinks. It's full of good ideas for your own strategy.
Trick for content: Always make sure that your content serve other purposes than simply "SEO", and always try to make it the best out there. Make your content so that you could use it in a sales pitch for a customer, or add it to your documentation, or something down this line. And the other way around; make sure that every piece of content - for SEO purposes or not - have a researched keyword, which is part of a cornerstone strategy.
Hope this is helpful. Let me know what you think!!
You nailed this! The problem is that people aren't thinking outside of the box as to the SEO strategies that would work well for THEIR specific industry.
Instead, they just apply generalist techniques that don't actually bring BUYERS to their site.
Hi there! I'm trying to build a tool for the SEO space as I also feel like it is quite frustrating. You seem like a knowledgeable person on the subject and I'd love to have a chat with you to understand where you see the space is lacking the most. If you feel like it, book a time with me here: https://calendly.com/franco-abtestingai/seo-rant
Thank you so much, @askedo! This does help a lot in developing a new perspective. I've known for a while that I need to work on developing patience. I guess that also applies to my SEO approach.
Also, I love what you mentioned about evergreen content. I'll have to do more thinking about what evergreen content will work well for me. Thanks again!
Google want the best results to rise - that is how they get paid. The SEO endgame is that there is no SEO - only the best products and best content will get to no. 1 --> the best search result. Prepare for that future as we are getting closer and closer.
This comment was deleted 4 months ago.
It is difficult at the beginning, when you just start . It gets better with the time
Hey @jamiesewell
I hear you! It can totally be frustrating.
disclaimer: I've been building an SEO course targetted to bootstrappers and makers with actionable steps. If you have twitter, sign up, DM me and I'll give you full access for free: https://bootstrappedseo.com/course
Also building affordable tools because yes, tools out there are crazy expensive, especially for bootstrappers. Think keyword research tools, competitor research, content creation, etc.
Some background - I started off as a solo founder and SEO was the only channel I focussed on. Got it to about 50k+ visitors a month without money. Just lazer focussed on what my users were searching and building content + the website backwards from that.
Then it came down to adding fuel to the fire, aka distribution. It's all covered in the course! Feel free to DM as well, hope I can help simplify an approach for you.
Thank you for sharing, @tomzaragoza! Glad to know I'm not alone :) I'll make sure to check out your course!
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Checking out the course now! Thank you for this!
Youre gonna need to DM me your twitter handle so I can give you access!
Just DM'd you! Thanks. :)
The link opened the course up though, as least the intro (where I'm at).
My 2 cents.
I maintain a personal blog where I write about technical topics. I do it mostly to document my understanding of technical concepts after I struggle learning them. Occasionally I'll share my articles on reddit or stackoverflow, but I don't do much. Over the last 12 months, I've had 170K users visit my blog (270K views).
Most people find me via google search where a handful of my articles are on the front page of some popular queries.
The moral of my story is, content is king. Write something that people want to read and google will push you up. I'm sure SEO tricks help, but content is the main driver IMO.
Make you product memorable, especially on first visits.
Sure, there is a lot of expert advice in the comments on what to do, BUT make sure you are building something that people will want to use — keep making your product better!
At times, people put in too much work and effort in SEO and actually forget to work on the product or idea.
Sure, I see your website on every google search, but what do I get when I click the link?
I must admit, not every business is the same, but I have seen a product rise to the top of google search page with very little or no SEO, simply because people used and talked about it a lot.
That's a great point and I will definitely keep that in mind when I'm building. Thanks for sharing.
My experience with SEO is that it if you keep writing blog posts and making good relevant content Google will start to rank you. I remember my first blog post that started to rank well on my website was an extremely niche and random topic and since then it brings thousands of visitors to my site a month. So I would say just post something often that hasnt been posted about much and the traffic will come.
This is super insightful, thank you.
If you execute your SEO strategy correctly, you will get clients 12 months from now. Can you afford to wait that long? You energy is better spent on more immediate channels such as cold outreach, Twitter and communities. Switch to SEO a later stage, once you have traction and a healthy cashflow.
I'm not an SEO expert but I spent time learning SEO. It's a long term investment and I regret not focusing more of my time on it. I rank for a bunch of high value keywords for a blog. My second biggest regret is not consistently writing or paying for content.
Here's my best advice:
Learn basic keyword research. You can use a tool like Ahrefs for a week for $7, worth every penny. It's not too complicated.
Find long tail keywords with low competition.
Look up what ranks for those keywords.
Write a better piece of content than what is ranking. Make it longer, add a chart, bullet points, images. If the #1 ranking piece is 1000 words, write 1500.
Answer the actual question people want answered.
Use Yoast to help you with the technical SEO requirements.
Publish.
Share on twitter, linkedin, indie hackers, etc.
Have patience.
Update the content in a few months.
Share on twitter, linkedin, indie hackers, etc.
Make sure you google search console and analytics are setup.
Have more patience.
Things will rank but it can easily take 6+ months
Happy to discuss in more detail if you'd like.
As a solo founder it is not easy to work on all the different marketing channels so if you're not able to invest the proper time in SEO, you may be better off focusing on a different channel. Also need to have a chance of ranking. I'd say with Ahrefs, you'd want keywords that are under 15-20 keyword difficulty for a brand new site.
SEO is really important for a long term play but you need to be confident the keywords make sense for whatever version your product is currently at. The biggest challenge for seo strategy for early stage startups is that they may not have confidence the content they need to create now will be relevant as the product evolves and the market may or may not shift with respect to their product. With that said, the best startups have excellent SEO.
Happy to have a chat about the topic in more detail if you'd like.
Hi there! I'm trying to build a tool for the SEO space as I also feel like it is quite frustrating. You seem like a knowledgeable person on the subject and I'd love to have a chat with you to understand where you see the space is lacking the most. If you feel like it, book a time with me here: https://calendly.com/franco-abtestingai/seo-rant
I love it! Copying and pasting this. Good to know about keeping keywords under 15-20 keyword difficulty for now. I'm new to ahrefs but might need to bite the bullet on a subscription. Seems like the industry standard.
I'm an SEO specialist. Post your SAAS and I will try to point you in the right direction.
Many of comments in the thread are correct: the SEO industry is largely bs.
But I also see many people without a validated product or strategy thinking SEO is solution to that problem. It isn't.
There are some good points about focusing efforts elsewhere with that in mind.
I totally get your frustration. As a solo founder I see SEO at the bottom of my list in terms of user acquisition strategies. Yes, it is a long game and that is precisely why I don't worry much about it.
During the initial days of the product, it is better to onboard users faster and get feedback. Once the product is in a good shape, start approaching medium term acquisition strategies like partnerships etc. By this time there will be a wealth of knowledge you would have created in terms of FAQs. Use that to crank out content and start working on SEO.
You do not have to use multiple SEO tools and throw thousands on it. I'd just focus on several tools and make sure they are great:
If you follow this simple schema during some time and if your product really solves someone's problem, SEO will work, sooner or later. Just don't give up and good luck will smile you :)
This is great — thank you for sharing! Do you update your metatags ever or keep them mostly the same over time?
If you have the dynamic content like blog posts and articles you have a template for them where you have the stubs for the metatags. You have to generate them on your own for each separate page (post). If your content is rather static - like the page you create manually, add metatags manually too. I don't update the metatags if content is the same.
SEO is a long term game but not extremely difficult. I have a blog with lots of SEO content in easy to understand language for beginner. Once you learn basics you can check out this resource for more in-depth knowledge in SEO. Link: https://aptblogger.com/seo-and-digital-marketing-resources
No, you are not alone in feeling that SEO is difficult. Many people find it challenging to keep up with the constantly changing algorithms and best practices. However, there are some things you can do to make the process easier. First, make sure you have a solid understanding of the basics. Second, stay up-to-date on the latest news and changes. Finally, be willing to experiment and test different strategies to see what works best for your website.
hmmm If I can give you the basics in one post it would be
SEO is
Technical: how the crawler crawl your website
Keyword research: when you start your website look for keyword with low competition
on page : write content / site architecture
links: build (or buy ?) backlinks to your website ( the highest ROI )
don't overcomplicate it
Love it! Thank you!
I am into the SEO industry for the past 4 years now, I can share some insights with you.
I have handled a fintech saas in the US for 1.5 years previously with more than 2 million users on the site.
Let me share how you can learn SEO and not be intimidated by it.
First, all it takes is a little bit of curiousness. Then Googling for the things you notice.
Eg:- If you see a snippet sort of thing (which is pulled out of a page & shown on google), you want to dig deep into it.
What is a featured snippet? Why and how does it work?
This way you are trying to reason for the things that are visible. Learning SEO starts from reasoning and asking questions. There are a lot of theories, but you will understand each aspect better as you question more and more.
I can share with you some simple tips to improve or to just get started with SEO.
The more in-depth your content is, the better it is.
Do you know what's the best way to learn SEO?
Just start a blog. Learn SEO and implement it on your own site. That's the best way you can learn SEO.
Hope you got it.
You can follow me or DM on Twitter if you need anything
This is great, @tejas3732! Thank you for the breakdown. I love the just keep it simple approach. It's when I have a million competing ideas that I just end up doing nothing.
Don't focus too much on SEO, focus on your product. Think about how people can share your product to get your SEO higher. Focus on writing good content on your shop.
Just make sure technically your site is ready for SEO. Setup a sitemap.xml, setup multiple languages, add hreflang links, add JSON-LD data where needed. Ensure your site loads fast.
But the most important thing is: Have a good product, do the marketing right, and get people to tweet about you. SEO dependency takes a year or so. It grows slowly.
SEO is not SEO ... WHAT!?
First of all, I would distinguish between Onpage & Offpage SEO.
Onpage SEO is rather simple since it is related to technical stuff like meta tags, structure, and content. Check out tools from Google like https://web.dev/measure/ or https://pagespeed.web.dev/. Another tool, I can recommend is Seobility. Of course, once you score quite well, does not mean your SEO is done. New content will be created, new products are covered, and so on. Third-party tools can help to check keywords for pages and track progress regarding "organic" traffic/ranking.
Offpage SEO on the other hand is rather tricky. One possible shortcut: Ads. Downside: Once you stop ads, your "paid" traffic is plummeting. Ads should be used only as a jumpstart (for certain pages/products/features/keywords). Here we are mainly talking about link building - the so-called "Link-Juice". Or in other words: Relevance. This covers the areas such as
Now, the overwhelming task: Doing both at the same time.
As usual content is king and consistency is the key to mastering SEO.
Good luck yall.
Awesome — thank you for the specific tools. I haven't read much about this distinction. Great to think about.
I've been running an online Star Trek play-by-email game since 1994. We're one of the oldest games in a VERY small niche/keyword set. We have an active forum and a wiki with more than 13,000 pages. We post new blog articles 15-25 times a month. We have a long-standing presence on Facebook and Twitter, as well a very active DeviantArt feed linking to us. We have other links coming to our website that are more than 15 years old. In short, we take what we do seriously and
We registered our domain in July of 2001 and let me tell you: Google don't give a shit. We bounce all around page 1 of Google search results and sometimes drop off them entirely. It's exhausting how many levers and switches there are around SEO to the point that I often just ignore it entirely – what will be, will be, most of the time for me. I have no more fucks to give.
So you're not alone. If I can't conquer the SEO racket with a 20-year-old domain, age-old inbound links, active social media presence, and a vibrant community that's transparent on our site, I don't have any clue how anyone else does.
Nobel mission. Good luck!
Damn - that is crazy @jordankrueger! I can't imagine how frustrating that would be. I wonder what the heck is going on? You'd think you'd be at the top of most anything Star Trek fan related. Google, make it so! 🖖
From my experience, if the content is helpful and solves a problem, search engines will naturally pick it up. Make sure you run your site through basic SEO and page speed checks to optimize the site. Currently, I am trying an experiment to grow a quote site purely from SEO, and I'm not expecting thousands of views on day one. Google takes a while to index the site, and you have to be patient. Also, backlinks are important but challenging to get unless your content is excellent. So first, focus on your content then people will naturally backlink to your site.
My quote site AtomicQuote
Learning about SEO lately myself — definitely have felt overwhelmed at times too.
I think the three main skills are keyword research, on-page optimization, and getting other pages to link to your site ("backlinks"). You could spend a whole career on any one of these, but getting the basics right for each will get you 80-90% there.
I'm consistently getting signups to ExtensionPay through Google with just a handful of content articles.
Backlinko has a lot of decent resources. For example, here's their guide for on-page SEO (e.g. title tags, meta tags, h1 tags, page structure, etc).
It's so overwhelming. I set out to learn something and end up with 20 tabs open to try to wrap my head around something.
yeah definitely feel that way too! Is there anything you do to help you in the moment when you're feeling overwhelmed like taking breaths or drinking some water or something?
I usually go on walks, but I've been pretty inconsistent with it. I'm going to start that back up. Just a short walk at lunch.
Nice, yeah. And that usually helps you feel less overwhelmed?
Yeah, usually helps some. But I've been thinking of starting a more regular meditation practice too.
Awesome! I've been meditating since 2018! Any ideas where you want to start?
I completely get it.
SEO is a very long game, and quite frankly most of the advice about SEO is outdated and does not work.
Most people hear "SEO" and they think "Oh I'll build a big list of keywords, write a blog post for each one, and spam people for backlinks" and you're right - that is frustrating and it does not work.
I completely disagree with @martdi on SEO being a acon though. SEO when done well can be the difference in you getting 0 visits to your site and hundreds. What you need, is a strategy.
Marketers and gurus talk a lot about SEO but they don't seem to think strategically about it. Strategy, in simplest terms, is a series of intentional decisions designed to reach a goal. I learned a framework for strategy as a product manager at HubSpot which I adapted to SEO in my 4+ years of client work and we've seen some pretty incredible results (and no, we did not need backlinks).
I've written the entire framework down in the eBook at this page. We provide this eBook for free if you want to check it out, it may help you re-frame how you're thinking about SEO.
Also remember, SEO is a long game. For a new website it may take 6-12 months of consistent effort to start getting results.
By saying SEO is a con I mostly meant that there are many SEO agencies that will charge a high price, under deliver and lose you money that you would have if you went another route.
SEO is nice to bring traffic, but it should not be the main marketing channel.
Gain recognition for what you do, do it well and backlinks will flow naturally. Which is THE BIGGEST ranking factor.
Gaining recognition and awareness for your product is going to be in the form of endorsement on partners blog, social media or recommendations from existing customers.
People that know your brand/have interacted with you or who received recommendations will also convert better than people discovering you through SEO.
Well that I definitely agree with. Many SEO agencies are no more than someone who has read a bunch of posts from Neil Patel and is trying to sell their "services" which gives SEO a very bad reputation.
Agree to disagree though on SEO not being a main marketing channel though.
Early-stage, sure but that's mainly because early stage companies lack the validation needed to ensure they have product market fit. I think it's a waste of time and money for any idea/early stage company to invest in a mature marketing strategy, instead they should be talking to customers and validate their product until they know they really have something that can scale.
For a mid-late stage company though, SEO is a fantastic channel to drive traffic, build brand awareness, and build authority in the space, I've seen this firsthand. Granted, SEO is one of many channels you should use (and is not the best channel for every single company).
This is great. Thank you, @tscionti! I'll definitely take a look at your book — appreciate you sharing it!
No problem! I hope it helps and wish you the best of luck in your SEO journey.
SEO does work but you need to patient for 3-6 months for it to show results. It has a compounding effect afterwords. SEO is not replacement for other marketing channel, early stage startups need to find a couple growth channels to scale without spending a lot of money.
Some thumb rules for SEO
-SEO is not about tools, get one great tool and track your progress(I suggest ahref)
-If the vertical/theme product does not have a lot of intent based search then SEO is not the right channel for you
-Find long tail keywords early on to compensate for the low DA/DR for your domain
-Time spent>Backlinks
Inspired by your post, have started helping out others with SEO tips to get them started. Refer the post blow.
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/share-your-landing-page-and-ill-suggest-a-strategy-for-seo-06213f77df
That compound effect is good to keep in mind. Didn't think about that. Thank you!
Yes now a days, google is updating on regular basis, in few past year seo was very easy but now google is trying very hard for people. being SEO expert we are also facing competition in market.
Regards
https://gossenterprise.co.uk
Just wondering, @jamie, do you have an update on your numbers?
Well, what got my attention is when you said you're going through tons of online resources and success stories.
My advice...don't!
SEO works in different metrics in different industries. And it even differs from site to site. What worked from a site doesn't work for another.
If you are starting within a budget, just find out what's been working for your successful competitors, and steal that.
SEO is a last mover's game, and it's totally in favor of that 'last mover'. You just need the right angle to reverse-engineer your niche and competitors.
Hi Jamie I went to your profile but there are no products. Whats are you bulding?
Hey Jamie. Have you tried using scale sleek ?
That's my point, when so many of link builders are collectively trying to build, it should not be this exhausting, it should not take your mental capacity to hell. A friend of mine suggested using Smartlink Ai to build links in under 5 mins with proper criteria, not sure if this helps you, but it helped, i was offered early access last week and have built 6 links till now
Hi I’ve tried it to make it easy with hats://rankon.top
Have a look at the largest collection of free SEO resources and tools.
Okay, so I see this is a post from 2022, but maybe this will help anyone that feels that SEO is frustrating and gimmicky.
First off, SEO comes across as gimmicky because most of the information sources aren't legit. It's full of fluff or designed to sound super complicated so that you end up buying a tool or a course.
There is a lot to SEO and it's important to understand how all of it ties together. The biggest issue with SEO educational content is that it tells you what to do, but in reality it cannot. The best way to think about it is like being a Chef vs a cook. A cook follows a recipe and a chef creates one.
In SEO you need to understand the foundations and principles, so that you can create your own recipe. Following someone else's will not ever get results for you.
If it makes you feel any better, most of the posts that people share about the results they achieved aren't real either. Real SEO specialists are too busy doing SEO.
There are many well known SEO specialists who don't write their own guides or content.
Insightful thanks for sharing.
I personally really like backlinko's guide for on page SEO, and other SEO best practices. https://backlinko.com/on-page-seo
I made a SEO keyword grouping tool https://optiwing.com/, I think SEO is hard to do perfectly but as long as you are providing value in your content it's also hard to do wrong
Yea, I have applied some on the tips on my site called http://gloryshinestore.com/ to improve my site's technicall SEO and the results are just wow.
Is there any tool that will make SEO easy? I mean it's vast subject and if there is a tool, that would mean a lot!
yes, true while the beginning stage Im also felt the same
wow, I think you need to write more about SEO. Because it too short to talk about SEO Offpage.
You don't have to change your SEO Styling/strategy every time google throws any updates.
If you will keep changing your styling then definitely you will start feeling frustrated.
Slowly start implementing new updates to your old styling/strategy, that will make your work simple and fruitful too as per my experience.
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Seo is really good for getting traffic. its a free method. I would like to recommend to do SEO for your website. check page for more details. https://sachin.info/seo-expert-india
Hi !
Thanks for these thoughts on SEO, it's really a tryhard game and I'm feeling less alone seeing it's difficult for others too ! I'm gonna dive in the comments to seek for tips and ideas ! See u
No you are not.
I am launching my first app which is similar to meetup.com now I know that a lot of people do not understand what meetup is, so let me explain.
Meetup is a platform where you can create a group and then host events. But it's very expensive and not easy to use.
So I decided to create a platform which is affordable and much better to use.
But I am struggling to find some long tail keywords to create content upon so that it could bring traffic to my landing page.
For example, few keywords I found is:
But these keywords just going to bring me users who already know about meetup.
What keywords should I target to get those users who are not yet meetup customers.
They are new individuals who want to create an online community or group?
I am struggling, hence I thought to put it on this subreddit to get some help.
Well, for me, SEO is also very difficult, but it doesn't matter, because I don't plan to do it myself anyway. It is much easier for me to find a company which provides Web Design services to get quality website development, web design and SEO services. I have a lot of my work to still waste time on what I don't understand at all.
@jamiesewell, Bad to hear your experience about SEO.
But trust me, It works. It works as a long term traffic generation strategy.
And SEO is not just about backlinks, It has its technical parts as well.
If you can fix those on page errors, focus on page speed and user experience and play for long term in terms of "Off Page" ,
you are going to see KILLER results.
PS. You do not need to invest in SEO tools.
usefull
Hi, @jamiesewell,
I do understand you completely because I've been working as SEO for +10 years and it's very common to feel on this way.
For me it's the same with coding, so I suppose each one just know about 1 difficult (and different) thing.
Target long-tail low competition keywords.
Help. Don't sell.
In my experience after 10+ years in the SEO field I find that a lot of people struggle with getting their SEO strategy right. It's often a hunt for keywords and putting just about any content out there to somehow cross-promote their products and services.
The thing is that Google is getting better at identifying helpful content every day and kills "tricks" and "hacks" quickly. If you simply focus on the current trending "ranking factors" the time your SEO will be successful (if at all) will be more limited than ever.
Being honest in your content and really taking the time to come up with quality content that is deeply helpful and valuable to your potential clients is what you need to focus on. This combined with perfect technical SEO and aesthetically pleasing presentation of the content always showed incredible results in basically every project I worked on. This strategy has always been valid and the genuine people always won as Google focuses on pushing websites that meet the search intent of the visitor.
Focus on really helping people and don't try to hard to sell.
I'm here with you
I've been building tools for the SEO industry for the past 10 years. As a solo bootstrapper, the time I could dedicate to my own SEO was limited. Still, this is the channel that gets 100% of my customers. I'm sharing what worked and what didn't in this post: https://seobuddy.com/blog/my-seo-journey-linkody/
👍👍👍👍
SEO takes time and effort.
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