

Ask HN: Do all startups do SEO? - niico

I've read a couple posts here where they are pretty much against SEO or see SEO as a "bad" or cheating thing.<p>Do you in your startup/website/company do SEO?<p>Maybe I am just too much of a SEO fanboy (?) but I 'm not sure if startups focus on organic search.<p>If so, what are your strategies? Like link building, articles, directories (no need to share your top secrets unless you want to :)  )
======
solost
It depends what kind of business it is to be honest. Most start ups focus on
their product and worry about marketing and SEO later on.

SEO is just a single internet marketing tactic and in all honesty until you
have something worth marketing beyond friends and family, I wouldn't worry
about it or any of the other internet marketing tactics you might consider
until the appropriate time.

With that said there is nothing wrong with creating an SEO frinedly site and
blog early on. However I wouldn't get overly concerned about them until you
really have something worth marketing. At that point you need to look at the
marketing plan and I would be sure to include SEO as part of it.

SEO really has three key parts. Good on page optimization, quality content
creation, and high quality link building with solid anchor text. Do those
three things well and you will succeed.

I hope that helps.

------
garrettgillas
Every company that makes a well functioning websites "does SEO". The easier
white-hat practices of the past have come into common practice as part of what
is considered good web development. Things like making sure all you
navigational links are text, using consistent linking, and assigning correct
alt tags to images go along these lines.

The the question that I think you might be trying to ask is "whether all
startups go into the grey and black-hat areas of SEO". The obvious answer to
this is no. Lots do though.

~~~
niico
Yeah, but every company do SEO after having a considerable amount of traffic
or users when I believe it should be the other way. Egg or chicken.

------
ddoonie
I believe you may as well do basic on page SEO when building your site. Maybe
even build in a blog, which will serve two purposes - original content and
updates for your readers.

You can do link building passively (review posts, guest blog posts etc...).

I do agree with some others that it would be unwise not to do a little leg
work from the beginning when building your site.

------
fezzl
I think that it's foolish for any startup to avoid or refuse to do SEO. SEO is
scalable, repeatable marketing. One of the things that I hear over and over
again is to constantly create relevant content that relates to the keywords
for which you are optimizing. SEOMoz and HubSpot have some pretty good
resources on how to get started with SEO.

------
niico
Another question would be. Is is possible to build something without focusing
on SEO nowadays?

