I'm working at myGengo this week on creating a SEO strategy and teaching the team about it. They have a fun company-wide institution called power blogging hour: drop what you're doing and, for the next hour, write like mad, then we post the results. Since I was there I got asked to participate, and this is what I could come up with regarding SEO and startups in an hour.
Let me know if you have comments. I sincerely think the blind spot about SEO and reflexive distaste for it is the biggest marketing opportunity startups are routinely missing.
> I sincerely think the blind spot about SEO and reflexive distaste for it is the biggest marketing opportunity startups are routinely missing.
Maybe you should brand what you do differently then, as some kind of 'marketing'. What do marketing guys say about hanging on to sullied words?
Find the right words, and you could really stand out from the crowd.
> SEO is called black magic
One reason it's called black magic is because it's a "platform" that appears to be built on shifting sands: Google's algorithm. Or at least that's one way of looking at it. The only people who know what goes on with Google are working there and aren't sharing it. You come across, with your A/B testing and general knowledge, as more of the 'real thing', but a lot of those guys seem to be trying to resell the Google webmaster guidelines for high hourly rates.
> Savvy use of techniques like scalable content generation
Given that it is 5:30 AM here I wouldn't trust a book-length elaboration right now, but yes, I am always happy to talk scalable content generation. See Greatest Hits section on my blog or upcoming projects that I'm not sure I can talk about.
Short version: identify large source of related problems for customers. Solve one problem via writing a web page about it, manually. Productize process of writing that web page such that the only asset required to write a spiritually similar page is money. Scale horizontally across large number of customer needs via addition of money. Collect stats on what becomes popular or profitable. Do it again, focusing on what worked or shows other obvious opportunities.
Basically, it's the "I sell BCC because I out publish every educational publisher in the world, combined, with regards to bingo cards", applied to whatever actually matters for your particular niche. You can safely assume that myGengo is interested in the problems experienced by people speaking Japanese who are trying to sell cookies to people who speak English. There is a very large set of similar needs. I'd bet money (OK, technically, they're betting money) that those needs (or similar ones) can be addressed at scale.
> Scale horizontally across large number of customer needs via addition of money.
Hrm... that seems applicable to BCC, where you go after the "long tail" of bingo cards. How about something, like, say, Amy Hoy's time tracking thing? Is there a long tail of time tracking? "Time tracking for .... "? Or maybe I'm not getting what you're saying.
(The comment I was responding to said something to the effect of "This sounds like content farming.") There are similarities: they produce content at scale by taking a repeatable process and throwing money at it. Then again, so does the New York Times.
Ideally, a successful startup is producing pages which actually solves problems for its users and, in the process, makes them lots of money by connecting their valuable software/service to people who need it.
Without hijacking anything, let me take a stab at "SEO is called black magic" issue.
The best luck I've had demystifying SEO is to boil it down to its essential principles, which I see as:
* Creating Useful Content
* Developing Links from Highly Ranked & Relevant Pages to the Aforementioned Useful Content
When you keep it at that level, I've found that it's easy to communicate both what the value of the process is, and why good SEO is hard work. Or, at least, what places good SEO beyond billing high hourly rates for implementing Google's webmaster guidelines.
Google's algorithm is always shifting, but those shifts tend to punish sites that rely in either SEO shortcuts, or outright deceit. I have yet to see a site punished for following the useful content / relevant links model.
Ok, but the world is much larger than HN. He's complaining about people not liking SEO, so my suggestion was to stake out a new word that doesn't have the same connotations of sleaze.
Writing interesting thins aimed at a link-rich audience which trusts you will help you build computationally visible signals of trust/authority to rank for "boring" things aimed at cash-rich audiences who do not yet know you exist.
For people interested in SEO tips straight from Google, Matt Cutts has written a lot about little things you can do to help Google figure out how to rank you. Here's one post on the subject: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-for-bloggers/
Google tries to be smart. It can sometimes be stupid. Helping Google out is a good thing to do.
HOWEVER, be sure that the things you do to your site to help it rank don't make it a worse experience for the person using it (keyword stuffing, etc), and don't make the web worse in general (link spamming.)
Read the SEOBook or SEOMoz guides for beginning SEOs, identify and fix your onpage issues, then start working on projects and processes which result in you getting links and interesting new content in a fashion which scales beyond your personal time involvement. Being a programmer is so helpful for these it is almost cheating (same goes for most other white collar professions -- what knowledge work can't you make vastly more efficient with programming skills?).
Assuming this is an earnest question... learn python.
I recommend you read "learn python the hard way". After you're done you will know plenty about programming - enough to build your own tools and tests. There have been two different posts on HN in the past 6 months to the tune of "I taught myself django (it's python) and programming in six weeks, check out my new site!"
You won't regret it.
Edit: I recommend python because it's designed to be easy to read, easy to learn, and powerful. That and its growth trends in the past 18 months are phenomenal. It's a perfect first language for today.
I'm not sure the simple SEO steps described here will really add "millions" to your valuation just like that, but this article really was more interesting than the somewhat link-baity title might suggest.
This is more a why post than a how post. The five minute intervention will not, by itself, add millions, just like your first commit to a version control system won't. However, it is a necessary prerequisite to doing clearly, incontestably valuable things.
I found a funded startup today whose title tag was $COMPANY_NAME. They're in a space where SEO is a clear win and it is obvious no person has spent so much as thirty seconds thinking about it. That's as bad as source control through "I zip up a copy of the code and email it to you."
Like everyone here, I've read a lot of stuff about SEO.
I'm not sure exactly why, but this article got me to actually decide to change the way I'm building my sites. All the others I just filed under: "Good to know. I'll use that some day."
You've just made the dozens of hours I've spent reading about this stuff actionable. Thank you.
Let me know if you have comments. I sincerely think the blind spot about SEO and reflexive distaste for it is the biggest marketing opportunity startups are routinely missing.