SEO can be a tricky business. On the one hand ranking high on Google is a goal shared by startups and multinationals alike, but on the other optimising your website can seem like a slow and laborious endeavour, particularly when manpower is low and budget stretched. However, there are a number of steps you can take to improve SEO without spending a fortune, and without diverting your focus from your day to day business.

Read on for our 5 SEO tips for your startup.

Determine Target Keywords Early

Targeting the right keywords is crucial to SEO success. Getting your research done early and creating content with a list of target keywords in mind will almost certainly yield positive SEO results for your startup in the medium to long term.

To carry out your keyword research we recommend that you use Google’s tried and trusted Keyword Planner. Enter a number of keywords related to your industry and the Keyword Planner will provide you with relevant suggestions, along with approximate search volumes.

For many startups resources are limited, so you may want to avoid targeting highly competitive terms which may be hard to achieve rankings for.

For example, in our research for keywords related to ‘SEO services’, we found that while the keyword ‘SEO’ is searched for over 33,000 times per month, the competition is high, making it difficult for those without large marketing budgets to rank.

In this case you may want to consider ‘long tail’ keywords. These are three and four word phrases which tend to have a lower search volume and subsequently are less competitive. Moreover, specific long tail keywords enable you to target users with greater accuracy than shorter more generic terms.

In our research we found that the search term ‘affordable SEO service’ had a respectable monthly search volume of 260, but, crucially, low competition.

When you’ve chosen your keywords you will need to utilise them strategically in your site and your content, while avoiding the plague of ‘keyword stuffing’ which renders your copy unreadable.

Keyword stuffing is the outdated practice of jamming your web page full of keywords in the hope of increasing your chances of ranking for them. Google gives the following example of keyword stuffing.

“We sell custom cigar humidors. Our custom cigar humidors are handmade. If you’re thinking of buying a custom cigar humidor, please contact our custom cigar humidor specialists at custom.cigar.humidors@example.com.”

The key places to include your keywords are in the title tags of your main web pages, in each corresponding page url, and in the page headline for any copy you write.

Make your Site Mobile Friendly

Increasingly, the majority of web searches are performed on mobile devices rather than desktop. As such, Google is increasingly giving greater weight to mobile friendliness as a ranking factor.

To begin with, use this mobile friendly test tool to determine whether or not your site is mobile friendly.

If your site is deemed mobile unfriendly then there are a couple of basic fixes you can implement right away.

We’ve all experienced the frustration of tapping the wrong link on a touchscreen, so make sure your links are far enough apart so that the user can easily tap the desired one.

Also take into account that mobile displays are considerably smaller than laptop screens or desktop monitors. Be sure to optimise your text accordingly, making it legible for the mobile user without the need to zoom in.

Finally, take into account the overall design of your site. Can a mobile user access all the main content when they land on your page? If possible alter your design layout so the user can access this content without scrolling too far across the page.

Optimise Images

A quick way to enhance the relevancy of your website is to optimise your images.

There are a number of ways to optimise your images, but the key things to get right are filenames and alt text.

When you upload your photos, be sure to fill out the alt text box.* The alt text is designed as a replacement for the image itself if the link is broken or unavailable to the user. More importantly for SEO purposes, Google spiders crawl alt text to determine relevancy.

*Only websites with CMS (content management system) will have this feature.

Make your Site Indexable

Contrary to popular belief, Google is not ‘the internet’ but an index of it. Google uses bots and spiders which ‘crawl’ the web, indexing web pages and relaying information to Google about the content and quality of that website.

In order to make sure you rank with Google, and that you are well placed to rise in those rankings, you will want to make your site as accommodating as possible for the Google spiders. To do this, make sure you have an XML Sitemap installed on your site. XML Sitemaps convey easily consumable information to search-bots and spiders. The information comes in the form of URLS, making it easier for search engines to keep up to date with the latest content on your site.

If you have a new site, or a number of new pages, then having an XML Sitemap is particularly important, as you want to make sure Google indexes your website and your new pages as quickly as possible.

To generate a sitemap and to get Google to crawl your website, use this free XML Sitemap Generator tool.

Optimise Title Tags

The title tag, the blue headline you see for each of Google’s search results, describes the title of a webpage and is crucial both for driving traffic to your site, and for SEO.

When optimising your title tags remember to utilise your keyword research. Ask yourself, ‘who are we targeting with this content’ and ‘what type of search are they likely to make?’ With this in mind, proceed to write your title tags sensitive both to the content on the page, and to the keywords you are trying to target.

The title tag is likely to be the first thing a user sees when your website appears in their Google results, so make your copy enticing as well as informative. Also make sure you keep your copy under 60 characters. Any more than than that and the text will be cut off by Google.

There is no consensus on the perfect title tag composition, but we recommend leading with your keyword, and ending, character count allowing, with your brand name. For aesthetic appeal, separate your phrases with the | (pipe) symbol.

Finally, use the MOZ title tag emulator to preview how your title tags will appear in the search engine ranking pages.

If you have any questions regarding SEO please get in touch with us on Twitter at @seanclark