The Go to Strategy for SEO for Founders

Many agencies or experts would say: SEO is a long-term strategy. It’s not something you can do once and forget about. They rarely specify the exact investment needed for SEO or when it should begin.

The answer is simple: You need to start SEO when you have a website. But you need to start serious SEO only if you have a real business and traffic.

Things to Do When You Have a Website

If I were to break down SEO into three key components—content, backlinks, and technical SEO.

I would advise starting with the basics. Your primary tasks are to ensure your website is easily crawlable by Google and fully responsive. This can be efficiently accomplished by auditing your website using tools like Google Search Console or Screaming Frog. For smaller websites with fewer than 500 pages, the free version of Screaming Frog is sufficient to address the basic issues. Additionally, make sure to submit your website to Google Search Console.

The harsh reality is, these foundational steps are just the beginning. No website can achieve a good ranking without high-quality content and strong backlinks. The even more challenging truth is, even if you produce content of similar quality, you won’t outrank competitors who have more authoritative backlinks.

Then some SEO experts might say: “You need to create unique content,” and suggest targeting “long-tail keywords.” But the truth is, long-tail keywords typically have low search volumes.

You can use tools like Ahrefs to check the search volume and keyword difficulty. If you’re a new website, you should focus on keywords that are marked in green and have some search volume. Generally (depending on your niche), keywords with a search volume of less than 100 are considered low-volume. These are the keywords you can rank for with a few backlinks, but as you can see, they won’t bring you a significant amount of traffic.

If you truly want to build high-quality backlinks, you’ll need to allocate some budget. Many agencies charge around $2000 - $3000 per month for such services.

My advice is to start with a basic site audit, and then begin some foundational link-building efforts (such as posting on Reddit, Product Hunt, Hacker News, or free website directories). You can also consider targeting low-budget paid backlinks, such as paid directories (which usually won’t charge a fortune), or some affordable backlink services (I don’t mean buying spam links; this kind of service is actually quite rare. Most agencies target clients with budgets of over $1000 per month).

Additionally, start writing content that targets long-tail keywords. You can expect some traffic from these keywords. In the beginning stages, even keywords with 100 visitors per month can bring some traffic to your website.

But as I mentioned earlier, this approach is not a serious SEO strategy. You won’t be able to rely on this kind of SEO for all your sales…

When do I need to start serious SEO?

You need to start serious SEO when you have a real business and traffic. SEO is for attracting the customers from the top of the funnel.

Who is at the top of the funnel? People who are not yet aware of your product or service. People who seek information now, not a solution (yet). You need to invest a lot to build some authority in your niche, let them know you exist, and attract them to your website by mostly reading some information in your niche. They may not be ready to buy now. But when they are ready, they will remember you and come back to your website maybe later.

If you want to build some authority in your niche, to attract more customers for the top of the funnel (TOFU) or monopoly the search results, you need to invest a lot in SEO. Nice fact you can find in this stage:

1. No good agency will charge you less than $2000 per month for these serious SEO services.
2. A single link from a top-tier website can cost you $1000, depending on the niche.
3. Content marketing is also fun, a good SEO blog may cost more than $500 per article.

Okay, so this is not fun. What I can just advise is, never start those serious and expensive SEO if you didn’t finish acquire your customers from your bottom of your funnel.

Reddit, Product Hunt, Hacker News, directories, and long-tail keywords are enough for the beginning. Try to first grab the easy customers. You can also try influencer marketing, or build some your own audience on social media. All of those can make your life easier than directly put a fortune in SEO.