SEO: Why it should matter to Tech Start-ups

With over 4.66 billion active internet users, SEO has become more important than ever to Tech Start-ups.

Have you ever been in a conversation where your friend mentioned a particular company, their products, and services and you were like, "wow! I didn't know something like that existed?" It's puzzling how you never found out about the company despite how long you have googled to find companies providing that solution. I have been in such a situation.

Last year, I stumbled on an Instagram ad that advertised Tell! Africa Fellowship for African undergraduates. While reading information about the company, I was amazed. Their initiative and value proposition are very good. Before then, I did not know about them though I had searched severally for a platform that helped African creatives to monetize their Talents.

Tell! Africa may not be classified as a Tech start-up even though it uses technology to solve problems for African creatives but it was used in this article to illustrate how visibility is important to businesses.

This is the same case with several start-ups. It's not enough to have a website for your business or start-up. It should be visible and accessible. This is what SEO is all about.

So are you a Tech Startup founder or co-founder or an employee at a start-up? In this article, I will explain why you should pay adequate attention to SEO. First, let's begin with a definition of terms that you will likely find as you read this article.

Definition of Terms

A Startup is a company in its early stages or beginning stages. Companies like this are often faced with financial challenges. This is because of the limited funds available to them.

** Tech** simply means Technology.

"**Tech startup **" is a combination of two words, Tech and Start-up. A Tech Start-up is simply a budding company that uses innovative technology to solve problems for a particular category of people.

Tech giants today like Google, Meta, and Microsoft started as Tech start-ups and scaled to become big Tech companies that we all admire.

Search Engines are tools that help internet users to discover or find information on the internet. Information here means answers to their queries and concerns.

The index is like a digital library where search engines store content. Search engines search the internet for new, fresh quality content. Contents found are indexed.

When internet users search for that item, the search engine searches the library, that is the index, to find relevant content users will solve the user's theorems and answers its queries.

Crawl refers to the art of searching the internet to find fresh content that would be indexed.

**A Crawler **is a software that crawls or searches for new or updated pages and indexes them.

SEO is simply an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. It means improving your site to increase its visibility when people search for products or services related to what you are offering on Google and other search engines.

If your Start-up is not visible on search engines, then it's as though you don't exist. SEO is an organic form of advertising. You do not pay to be ranked. You put in efforts to content rank your contenthavingving great relevance and usefulness.

5 reasons that should make Tech start-ups pay attention to SEO

  • Our world is becoming more digital

  • To maximize the funds at hand.

  • To solve specific problems

  • To increase sales and secure more clients.

  • To increase brand awareness.

It is essential to note that the foundation has to be correct for SEO or any marketing technique to work. Foundations here imply a clearly defined business model, buyer persona, audience, company goals, vision, and mission. If not correctly gotten, SEO and other advertising techniques would be a waste of time, money, and valuable resources.

Don't go creating a blog or a website when you don't know who you are serving or the problem your Start-up/ product is solving. Getting the foundations of your Tech Start-up right is critical to its success.

Further, as you pay attention to SEO, don't forget to pay attention to customer needs, and analytics. Use feedback appropriately to improve your products and services. That way your Start-up will keep growing and would one day grow to be like Tech giants like Meta, Google, and Microsoft.

Conclusion

In this article, emphasis was laid on how important SEO is to your business growth However, SEO alone does not birth results. An interplay of factors brings about the growth of a Start-up. Factors like a good Team, the right company values, appropriate use of feedback, funding, and hard work lead ultimately to business success.

Further reading

What is SEO: The step-by-step guide

38 failed startups with bad marketing efforts

Google SEO starter guide