4 ms·

As always with SEO it is dangerous to make broad sweeping statements. What works for a small local website, doesn't have to work for a big casino/travel website

As always with SEO it is dangerous to make broad sweeping statements. What works for a small local website, doesn't have to work for a big casino/travel website and vice versa. The advice I gave was sincere though. In practice I see many businesses aiming for links, when their content just isn't up to par. Quality content alone (without links) is enough to rank in many niches. If you get to the hyper-competative SERPS, sure, you can't escape link building or doing most of the work in-house. Droll: If you are about to enter a hyper-competative niche, you should already know what you are doing, else there is little chance you succeed. For me, in practice, creating accessible content is still one of the best things start-ups can do. Blog about two times a week and you will rank for it, you don't necessarily need backlinks. If you got an inaccessible site with poor content, you need (probably to buy) backlinks to make a dent. Disclaimer advice: Never stake your business model on uncustomized broad SEO advice. Especially when there are plenty of authoritative sources for sound start-up SEO advice like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El3IZFGERbM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El3IZFGERbM http://vimeo.com/39473593 http://vimeo.com/39473593 http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/seo-for-start-ups/ http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/seo-for-start-ups/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/

trevelyan 14y ago
At risk of sounding acerbic.... :) (1) Can you provide an example of a business with over 100k in revenues that has been founded in the last 2-3 years in a remotely competitive niche and is at or near the top of the search results for the most likely general search terms? How about a bootstrapped business? (2) And can you honestly say that the mass of blogspam that regularly hits HN disguised as business advice is really high-quality content?
- a5seo 14y ago
  Vayable (YC12) - coney island tour (first page) HelloFax (YC11) - fax (first page), google fax #4, Lanyrd.com (YC11) - mobile conferences #1, ux conferences #2, + hundreds of other high value kws TutorSpree (YC11) - tutor (first page), private tutoring #1, ZeroCater (YC11) - catering in sf (first page) MailGun (YC12) - email api (first page) With some time, I could easily find better examples. What you'll notice with these is that they are succeeding not by trying to rank for a handful of keywords, but hundreds or thousands of keywords. Organize and curate a collection of useful content of interest to your customers, and you will get Google to rank it. Most large aggregations of fill-in-the-blank are not well SEO optimized. If I were building something, I'd look at a niche outside of travel, real estate, and employment, and create an aggregation around that. Look at dogvacay.com -- launched in March 2012 ranked #1 for "dog boarding" in many markets.
  - trevelyan 14y ago
    Thanks for putting this list together. I stand humbly corrected, and am grateful for it. I'll take a look at what these companies are doing and try and figure out how they are managing it.

trevelyan 14y ago

At risk of sounding acerbic.... :) (1) Can you provide an example of a business with over 100k in revenues that has been founded in the last 2-3 years in a remotely competitive niche and is at or near the top of the search results for the most likely general search terms? How about a bootstrapped business? (2) And can you honestly say that the mass of blogspam that regularly hits HN disguised as business advice is really high-quality content?

a5seo 14y ago
Vayable (YC12) - coney island tour (first page) HelloFax (YC11) - fax (first page), google fax #4, Lanyrd.com (YC11) - mobile conferences #1, ux conferences #2, + hundreds of other high value kws TutorSpree (YC11) - tutor (first page), private tutoring #1, ZeroCater (YC11) - catering in sf (first page) MailGun (YC12) - email api (first page) With some time, I could easily find better examples. What you'll notice with these is that they are succeeding not by trying to rank for a handful of keywords, but hundreds or thousands of keywords. Organize and curate a collection of useful content of interest to your customers, and you will get Google to rank it. Most large aggregations of fill-in-the-blank are not well SEO optimized. If I were building something, I'd look at a niche outside of travel, real estate, and employment, and create an aggregation around that. Look at dogvacay.com -- launched in March 2012 ranked #1 for "dog boarding" in many markets.
- trevelyan 14y ago
  Thanks for putting this list together. I stand humbly corrected, and am grateful for it. I'll take a look at what these companies are doing and try and figure out how they are managing it.