Do you have a startup or in the startup world? I'm a serial entrepreneur, working my tail off on my current startup. Over the past 3 years I've learned a lot about the growing a startup. This past summer I sold my last startup so I'd like to think that I know a thing or two about getting people interested in your startup. Below are 5 important tips that I've learned to take my startup to the next level.
1. Startups Have To Blog Daily
If you're a startup and looking to get ranked in Google, you have to be posting content to your website. Any business for this matter should be putting up content on their website daily. Here's the thing with Google, if you're not writing daily and putting up content on your website, Google isn't going to spider your website. The more pages you have, the better your site will rank. The more fresh content your site has, the more it will show up in the fresh search results.
Google loves content, the fresher the better. Fresh content accounts for 30% of all search results. So if you're not putting up fresh daily content, you're site is going to miss our on 30% of all search results. One of the best ways to put up fresh daily content is on your blog. Blogging is pretty easy, it doesn't take a genius to do it. Here are 3 tips to blogging.
- Try and make sure all posts are related to what your business is about.
- Make sure all posts are longer than 500 words. They can be shorter but try and have them min the 700-1000 range.
- In every post make sure that you talk about and link to 2 other blog posts on your site.
2. Link, Link, Link Juice Baby
What is the deal with links? Everyone is talking about them but I don't get why they are so important? Links are a lot like money; the more you have of it, the better you'll be. Sometimes you have to spend money to make money. Sometimes you will have to pay others to do it. Sometimes you'll have to put a lot of time and effort into something to get more. In the end, you're building up to get more money. Links are the same. Sometimes you have to spend links to get links. Example would be this blog. I write this post for links. Whenever I write a post on another persons site, I get a link back to my site. I've spent a lot of time doing this. I'm paying the price for links in my time and knowledge and this blog is paying me by linking to me.
Try and get all the links you can. Links are a popularity contest, the more you have the better. Important to note that not all links are created equal. Seek after good links from reputable sources. A good example would a link from your average Joe's blog and a link from Stanford's website. Which do you think is more powerful? That's what I thought. The more reputable the source, the better the link will be for your website. Need more examples of good links and to know if your links are good or great, click here to learn more.
Note never buy links. I spend money on buying links through real work and people doing links. Never buy 1000 links for $10 or scams like that. Those might work in the short run but will screw your site in the long run. Don't take the easy way cause it won't work forever. Do honest work and honest work will come back to help you!
3. Social. (Yelling)
In case you're living in a cave there is this social network called Google +. Join it today and start putting everything you do up on it. It's going to save your business and give you a competitive edge over all your competitors that aren't using it. Which in most cases, is everyone. Google is also paying attention to social indicators on your website. How many people are mentioning you on Twitter. How many people are liking your page on Facebook. All of these help and play a big part in getting your website ranked.
If you want to launch your startup to startup stardom you need to be pushing each and every one of these 3 tips each day. By doing this it will help launch your startup to getting more visitors, ranking better in the search engines, and becoming more popular online!
If you liked this post, you might also enjoy How To Get Your Startup Featured By Giants
Thanks for the tips, John! Another note on links, the best ones come from sites that are related to your site/niche. I also like to focus on links that will drive relevant traffic and not just to have a link.
“Do honest work” can’t be stated enough. Google is getting better and better at detecting spam and honesty will keep you covered long-term. Thanks for another great post John!
John,
Excellent tips here. I love learning from someone who is in the grind and has actually started and sold a startup. It’s important to be patient in the process, as Rome wasn’t built in a day.
I love the tips John, it’s always great to hear from another serial entrepreneur like myself. I guess I need to blog more! haha
John, this is an excellent, insightful post.
Can you please clarify “In every post make sure that you talk about and link to 2 other blog posts on your site.”
Can it be 2 pages on your website or only blogs? (NOTE: my website is built into my custom website (not wordpress)
Of course…if you are running a small business, continually coming up with new business ideas (one per day), being the marketing genius required knowing how to sell it, getting online to blog and tweet about it at the same time as actually running your business, is tough. There aren’t many people that can work the way that a multi-national can, and have a marketing department to concentrate on this.