4 SEO Mistakes That Could be Preventing Your Startup From Making Millions of Dollars

Amongst the myriad of valuable lessons that my dad taught me growing up, one that I find myself continuously harking back to if not on a daily basis—certainly on a weekly occasion—is that any dollar that is saved, is the equivalent of a dollar that is earned. 

Or as author, financial literacy entrepreneur, and thought leader, John Hope Bryant, so elegantly put it, “You can make money two ways—make more or spend less.”

As CEO or manager of a startup, I’m sure you’re already aware of the fact that any dollar that your company either saves or loses—is a dollar that will be directly reflected on its bottom-line. And as significant as it is that your startup is financially astute—it is just as pivotal that your startup is also prudent as it pertains to customer acquisition. 

Focusing on the first way that John Hope Bryant said you can make money (by making more of it) SEO (search engine optimization) helps businesses do just that by boosting awareness, driving more organic traffic to their websites, and producing more quality leads. 

Simply put, if concerted investments are made towards it, the ROI of search engine optimization could generate millions of dollars in sales revenue for your startup by attracting thousands of new customers. That's if your company avoids making these 4 common mistakes.

1. Choosing incompatible keywords 

What if there was such a thing as a customer magnet? Would you be interested in purchasing it for your company? Of course you would! Well, many digital marketing professionals would attest that SEO is the closest thing to a customer magnet that exists in the world today; for the simple fact that it'll lead to your business having higher rankings on search engine results pages.  

This in turn, indicates to potential customers that your business is authentic and trustworthy. Which would result in a higher conversion rate because obviously—authenticity and trustworthiness are major contributing factors that influence consumers’ purchasing decisions. 

But in order to achieve high rankings on SERPs (search engine results pages) like Google, Bing, and Yahoo! for an extended period of time, the keywords that potential customers query must be congruent with the products or services that your business actually offers. 

Try to think of keywords as if they are words your startup’s ideal customer would search for when they are looking to solve a problem that your business specializes in resolving.

Where most startups make one of their biggest mistakes when implementing the keyword portion of their SEO strategy, is they select keywords to rank higher on SERPS that aren’t aligned with the actual offerings that they provide. 

So while this strategy may result in increased website traffic initially, visitors quickly leave their websites disappointed because they couldn’t find what they were actually searching for. 

Instead of misleading potential customers with incongruous keywords, increase your startup’s conversion rate by utilizing keywords that actually align with your startup’s offerings. 

2. Not indexing your web pages 

This may be hard to believe at times, but Google and other search engines truly do want your business to succeed! Think about it, the more people that log on search engines looking for what your business has to offer—the more ad revenue is generated by the respective companies that own those search engines.

What’s key is to make it as easy as possible for search engines to rank your business as high as possible for what it provides its customers. Simply put, help search engines help you by optimizing your website. 

Far too often, what I discovered is that startup’s make it difficult for Google and other search engines to help their business rank higher on SERPs by failing to make requests for their startup’s web pages and blog content to be indexed by Google.

To request for your web pages to be indexed by Google, simply log onto Google Search Console. Next, set up an account for your website. Then, go to the URL inspection section of the website and copy and paste the URL for each web page on your startup’s website in the inspection bar and request for Google to index the page. 

After crawling the requested web page, if the ‘Googlebots’ do not find any issues with your URL—the page will then be indexed on Google. Making the page more accessible for searchers to find them. 

3. Neglecting to publish quality content marketing 

For as long as people in the world encounter problems in their day-to-day lives, they will always search for sound and simple solutions to those problems. Insert content marketing into the equation. Content marketing works wonders in two ways: It provides useful information which helps internet users resolve their problems. 

It also helps companies that publish it establish a good rapport with potential customers by demonstrating the expertise and proficiency required to resolve those problems. What’s more, content marketing also helps companies rank higher on SERPs. That’s if the content provides one particular thing to potential customers—quality. 

“The effectiveness of generating and publishing content for improved SEO is predicated on one main factor—quality.” Writes Will Coombe, author of the book, 3 Months To NO. 1: The “No-Nonsense” SEO Playbook For Getting Your Website Found On Google. 

Coombe goes on to state that, “If the content we create and subsequently promote on our website is genuinely not useful, interesting, or shareable; we might as well not bother.” Publishing quality content marketing could help your company rank higher on SERPs by precisely providing the value that people are searching for. 

Which leads more visitors to your website; enticing them to become paying customers as a result. Nonetheless, not publishing quality content marketing pieces on your startup’s website could also have the opposite effect.

4. Not building backlinks

Credibility goes a long way in life. Not just with human beings. But also with software systems like search engines. Here’s the thing, search engines are designed to help users find the most relevant topics that they’re searching for.

And the more that other established websites besides your own—communicate to search engines that your website’s content is relevant to what users are searching for—the more credibility your website establishes with search engines to help it rank higher on their SERPs.

Backlinks, which are hyperlinks from one website to another, help optimize your website by indicating to the top 3 search engines, Google, Bing, and Yahoo!, that your website is credible and therefore—the topic relevance based upon keywords searched by their respective users are most compatible with your website’s content. 

Another very costly SEO mistake made by a vast majority of startups is that they forsake building backlinks. By not building backlinks to your startup’s website, your startup is at an SEO disadvantage to competitors who may have a thorough backlink strategy. 

Which would give those competitors a huge advantage on SERPs. Something that although is needless to say, bears emphasizing—could potentially prevent your company from generating millions of dollars in sales revenue over time. 

Key takeaways

Due to their lack of initial resources, startups almost always enter the market at a substantial disadvantage. Without question, SEO is one of the best weapons that a startup could have in its marketing arsenal to help equalize the playing field as it concerns customer acquisition. 

If you would like for us at Decryption to create a comprehensive SEO-focused digital marketing strategy for your startup, contact our office today to schedule a complimentary client consultation and we’ll take it from there!