SEO for startups: what matters in your first months

SEO advice is written mostly for big sites with thousands of pages and a marketing team. A startup with five pages and one founder needs very little of it. The rest can wait until people are searching for you by name.

Is SEO worth it for an early-stage startup?

Yes, but not as your first channel. Search traffic builds slowly. Google says in its SEO Starter Guide that some changes show up in hours and others take several months. Your first users will come from people you reach directly. SEO is what keeps visitors arriving after you stop posting, so it’s worth starting early and small.

Week one: the technical basics

These take a day and decide whether Google can list you at all:

• Readable pages. Your text must be in the page itself, not added later by JavaScript. Many AI-built apps fail this. See why your app isn’t showing on Google.
• Allowed in. No leftover noindex tag, and no Disallow: / in robots.txt.
• One address. Your own domain, with every other address redirecting to it.
• A unique title and description for every public page. See the prompt for titles and descriptions.
• Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, with your sitemap submitted.

That’s Google’s Search Essentials in practice for a small site. Everything else is optional at this stage.

The pages worth writing first

Your homepage ranks for your name. Everything else comes from pages that answer searches people make before they’ve heard of you. For a SaaS, those usually are:

1. The problem itself. “Why do my houseplants keep dying” brings people Bloomly helps, long before they search for a reminder app.
2. How-to questions in your niche, answered properly, with your app as one of the steps where it fits.
3. Comparisons and alternatives. “Bloomly vs [the best-known plant app]” or “apps like [it]” are searched by people ready to choose. Be honest about where the other product is better.
4. Use-case pages. “Plant reminders for offices” for each kind of user you serve.

Write each page from what you actually know: your users’ words, your own tests, real examples. Google’s guidance on helpful content asks whether a page offers original information or analysis, not just a rewrite of what’s already out there.

How to find what your users search for

You don’t need a paid tool to start:

• Listen to your users. The words they use in emails, calls and reviews are the words they type into Google.
• Google’s autocomplete and “People also ask”. Type your problem and read what Google suggests.
• Communities. The questions that keep coming up on Reddit and in forums are searches too.
• Search Console, after a few weeks. It shows the searches you already appear for, which are the easiest to grow.

Pick searches with a clear problem behind them. A small search that matches what your app does beats a big one that doesn’t.

Links without buying them

Links from other sites help Google find and trust you. For a startup, the honest ones are enough at first:

• Launch sites and directories that fit your product
• Your social profiles and founder profiles
• Communities and Q&A threads where your app genuinely answers the question
• Tools and partners you integrate with, if they list integrations
• Useful free tools or data that others want to link to

Don’t buy links or trade them. Google’s spam policies treat link schemes as spam, and a new site can’t afford to start with a penalty.

SEO for SaaS: what’s different

A SaaS has two kinds of visitors: people with the problem, and people comparing tools. Both need pages, and they search differently. Problem searches bring more people who aren’t ready to pay yet, so give them something useful and a reason to try the app. Comparison searches bring fewer people who are ready to choose, so answer pricing and “how is it different” plainly.

Keep your logged-in app out of search. Dashboards and account pages should be blocked from indexing. Only the public, marketing side of your app should rank.

What to skip for now

• SEO agencies and expensive tools. They pay off once you have pages that rank and know which searches convert.
• Publishing lots of AI-written posts. Pages made in bulk to catch searches break Google’s spam policies, and they don’t convert.
• Chasing a perfect score in an SEO checker. Fix what blocks Google, then write pages people want.
• Your app’s name as a keyword. Nobody searches for it yet.

How to tell if it’s working

Open Search Console once a week. In the first months, watch impressions (how often you appear) before clicks. Rising impressions on the searches you wrote pages for mean you’re on the right track. Clicks follow when those pages move up. For answers in AI assistants, see how to get found in ChatGPT.