An 10-Minute SEO Crash-Course For Startups Courtesy of Google

10 Minutes of Gold From Google To Businesses

What if you could get ten minutes of consulting from one of the best SEO teams in the world?

Maile Ohye from Google advises your startup as if she had only 10 minutes as your SEO consultant.

Key SEO Points for Startups From Google:

1. Select www or non-www and use a 301 to redirect the other.

2. Verify Ownership of your site in Webmaster Tools.

3. Do a Domain Background Check

4. Crawl/Fetch As Googlebot in Webmaster Tools (and submit to index)

5. Include Analytics Code Before You Need It

6. Strategy In Site Design (Utility, Navigation, & Focus)

7. Define Your Conversion

8. Be Smart About Copy (Keywords

9. Every Page Should Include: A unique topic, A unique title, a unique meta description, keywords in URL, descriptive anchor text.

10. Potential Pitfalls: Don’t hire rogue/shady SEO teams, Don’t participate in link schemes or link buying, don’t forcus more on site fanciness than having indexable/seachable text.

11. Page Speed (Load Time): 2 seconds is the threshold. (Too many plugins or non-compressed graphics slow down WordPress)

12. Checking Your Ranking Using Webmaster Tools’ Search Queries. Video

13. Provide an awesome product or service & generate buzz.

14. Social Media is Terrific

15. Even with great advertising & terrific marketing, valuable conversion happens on-site so stay focused and ready.

Good stuff from Google to site owners for sure!

I often consider Webmaster Tools one of the most under-appreciated sites by bloggers.

You need to be there if for no other reason than to get first-notification from Google if your site is ever hacked.

What was your favorite part of this video from Maile? What did you learn?