SEO for startups: 11 marketing actions to take before you build your website

Neil Patel wrote in an article on Forbes that 90% of startups fail. What are the causes? First of all, many entrepreneurs suffer from excessive optimism, don’t do their math properly and leave far too much to chance. The lack of a medium- and long-term marketing plan can also prove fatal for a startup.

Many entrepreneurs who want to invest online, whether in a business website or an online store, believe the first step is building the website. Only after it is finished do they start thinking about how they will sell their services or products and begin putting a marketing plan on paper. That is completely wrong!

Marketing has to start long before the website is built. By the time developers start building the site, 80-90% of the business’s promotion plan should already be sketched out.

And a marketing plan doesn’t just mean a few rough calculations about how to spend some money. A marketing strategy is really a set of concrete actions that need to be taken at the right time.

Lately, against the backdrop of some government programs, we have seen a surge of Romanians starting their own businesses, many choosing digital as the place to grow them. This initiative is commendable, but from our interactions with some of these first-time entrepreneurs, we have noticed that many are not at all familiar with how online marketing works.

After running more than 200 SEO campaigns, we have noticed that many digital entrepreneurs set off with the wrong strategy, with unoptimized websites  that they later have to change significantly in order to implement various marketing strategies.

That is why, based on a number of SEO analyses for online startups, we have identified 11 marketing actions you need to take before launching your website.

1.     Keyword research (identifying the market)

Keyword research is the foundation of an online marketing campaign. Any marketing strategy must start, first and foremost, by identifying the keywords relevant to the business in question.

Keyword research doesn’t just mean identifying 5-10 main keywords with the highest search volume; it has to focus on identifying all keywords, regardless of their monthly search volume.

Keyword research really means identifying the market and establishing its growth potential.

After the keyword research, it is very important to calculate the total search volume of those keywords, because this is how we can establish the size of the market we are targeting.

The most useful tool for identifying keywords is Keyword Planner, offered free of charge by Google. Other tools that can prove useful are Ahrefs, UbberSuggest, KeywordTool and SEOmonitor.

2.     Identifying market seasonality and trends

It isn’t enough to identify keywords and the way users search for information online. Once we have seen how big the market is, we need to identify its seasonality and trend.

To do this, we look at how the Google search trend changes from one month to the next, which lets us identify the most profitable months for sales well in advance.

This analysis is very easy to do with the free tool  Google Trends.

It is also very important to look at the search trend over the years to see whether the market is growing or shrinking. With this historical data, we can forecast how the market will evolve in the coming years.

3.     Creating a buyer persona

To optimize marketing campaigns as well as possible, you need to build a profile of the ideal buyer, known in marketing terms as a buyer persona.

More precisely, creating a buyer persona aims to identify the types of customers and sketch the profile of the ideal customer for the business.

The information a buyer persona should include:

• Gender
• Age
• Marital status
• Occupation
• Financial situation
• Interests
• Education
• Purchase decision (the reasons they prefer product X over

product Y)

Ways to collect the information:

• Market research : the National Institute of Statistics (Romania’s official statistics office) is a useful source of information

• Opinion surveys : if you have a database of your customers, you can ask them to answer a predefined set of questions. If you are just starting out and don’t have such a database, you can use a company that specializes in opinion polls.

• Your own instinct : don’t forget that a buyer persona is a fictional entity, so besides market information you can also build it on your own instincts and wishes

4.     Identifying your main competitors

Once the keyword research and the buyer persona are finalized, the next step is to identify your main competitors.

Competitors should be analyzed according to the visibility they have in Google for the keywords identified in step (1).

In practice, we check for each competitor what position it holds in Google. Of course, we won’t check Google positions manually; we will again use a tool, and RankTracker is excellent for this.

5.     Competitor analysis

Once we have identified competitors and grouped them by their visibility in Google, we also need to analyze them to determine what effort they have put in to get where they are.

Our analysis will have two directions:

a.      On-page analysis:

It is extremely important to analyze how competitors have structured their website (how many categories and subcategories they have, how they display their products, what kind of filters they use, etc.).

b.     Backlink profile analysis:

Backlinks  are the main criterion Google takes into account when ranking a website. There is no point building a technically excellent website, because without backlinks we won’t reach the first page of Google any time soon. For that, we need a link building campaign in which we publish press releases and articles on blogs or various niche websites with backlinks to our site.

To  estimate the budget we need to reach competitors’ level, we need to see how many backlinks they have built up over time. For this analysis we can use tools such as Ahrefs or Majestic.

6.    Defining the website structure

Although it is tempting to define the website structure before any preliminary analysis, this step is best taken only after completing the steps listed above.

Once the keyword research is done and the relevant keywords have been identified, they need to be grouped by topic and area of interest.

In practice, the entire site structure is mapped out based on keyword volume. For an online store, categories and subcategories are created based on how users search for information in search engines, and for service websites, a dedicated page is created for each service.

7.    Calculating marketing costs and setting the budget

Many entrepreneurs fail precisely because they don’t have a well-developed marketing plan. And this marketing plan shouldn’t be drawn up after the website launches, but long before it is built.

To calculate the budget, you first need to identify the main marketing channels you will use to promote your products (SEO, Facebook, Google AdWords, YouTube, affiliate marketing, price comparison sites, email marketing, etc.).

Calculating the budget needed for each marketing channel can prove fairly complicated for someone without experience. That is why, for this step, the simplest option is to request quotes from various online marketing agencies.

8.     Choosing the domain

Many people would think choosing a domain should be the very first step of an online business. That is completely false!

First you need to study the online market and the competitors, build a buyer persona, structure the website and set the main business directions, and only after all these actions should you choose a name for your future website.

Useful tips for choosing a domain:

• Choose a brand, not just a name

Forget keywords: their place is not in the website’s name but in its content. For your domain, choose a name that has the potential to become a brand. Users shouldn’t have trouble remembering your website, so avoid sophisticated names that are hard to pronounce. Choose something simple and, ideally, as short as possible.

• Check whether similar brands exist

It is very important to rank first in Google for your brand name, which is why you should check what similar brands exist before choosing your website’s name.

• Avoid hyphens and numbers

A domain that contains hyphens and/or numbers has very little chance of becoming a brand, and users will have trouble understanding it.

• Choose the right extension

If your business operates in Romania, choose the .ro extension. If you have an international business, choose .com. Avoid extensions that can cause confusion, such as .net, .co or .eu.

9.     Customizing the “Coming soon” page

After choosing and registering the domain, it is a good idea to create a “Coming soon” page to let users know the website will officially launch shortly. As for development, the site should be built in a password-protected environment (either a subdomain of the main domain or a subdomain of the web development agency you work with).

What the “Coming soon” page should include:

• The approximate date the website will go live
• A short description of the business (a motto, a proverb, a funny image, etc.)
• A subscribe form, so interested users can be notified by email when the website launches
• Links to your social media profiles (if any)
• A countdown timer with the days left until launch (optional)

10.  Listing in Google My Business

If the business already has an office or a physical location, it is a good idea to list it in Google My Business.

Google My Business is a free service provided by Google that gives businesses more visibility by listing them in Google Maps and creating a Google card with essential information about the business (field of activity, contact details, opening hours, etc.).

Google will send a letter with a verification code to the address given in the My Business account. Once you are listed in Google My Business, branded searches will also show a box with additional information about the company on the right-hand side of the page.

11. Launching a teaser campaign

You don’t have to wait for the official website launch to promote your business. Once the Coming Soon page is set up, you can start a teaser campaign to spark users’ curiosity about the website you are about to launch. A teaser campaign is also a very good way to collect email addresses.

Ways to promote the teaser campaign:

• Facebook campaigns
• YouTube campaigns
• Press releases and media appearances
• Outdoor campaigns (posters, banners)

Conclusions:

“Online will always be simple,” eMAG once said. But the simpler it gets for users, the more complicated it gets for entrepreneurs. Digital is a space that has seen, and is still seeing, fantastic growth, offering huge opportunities to businesses. Because it is constantly changing, online entrepreneurs must always stay informed and open to new things to keep up.

And most importantly, a successful entrepreneur has to plan every step in advance to make sure they are first at the starting line.