You don’t need SEO from the get-go

// April 8th, 2008 // Startup

Brian Burns and I have recently discovered each other and are both excited to learn there’s someone out there doing the same kind of thing: helping startups build not just better products, but better stories about who they are and why their product matters. I may rave about his insights more than once in the next few weeks, and I apologise for that, but wherever possible I’ll try to extend on his work and maybe even argue a point or two to the contrary.

It’s not just me – you’ve got to love a guy who pins his heart right out there on his sleeve and declares something as bold as “startups don’t need SEO in a post like this one. He’s going to attract a lot of reactions.

I think Brian’s right about this, to a point: a new tech startup doesn’t need SEO for the first phase of growth.

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For most startups, the first phase I call the “buzz phase” of growth, where you’re trying to find taste-makers, mavens, pundits, bloggers, journalists and geeks to try your product out and talk about it.

Loving the buzz phase right now? Feel like you can ride that Techcrunch love right on into Series B, trade sale or positive earnings growth? Sorry, but the buzz phase does end for most startups, usually when enough early adopters have judged it and found it cool or lacking something (or both). Sometimes it ends quite suddenly and irrevocably.

Be prepared for that to happen when you least expect it. And unless you’re building a product that’s only for the <10,000 people who make up the startup community, for success you need to have growth beyond the initial buzz.

Sure, a handful of startups go straight from buzz to broad consumer adoption or get acquired with no further investment in marketing. I’m certain if you were able to get the founders of those companies to talk honestly about it, they’d admit that it was none of their doing – it was a minor feature of their product that they never expected to be the killer app, they just happened to be in a space that one day Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft had to have a piece of, or suddenly it became cool for mainstream consumers to act a little geekier than normal in some respect, as in the current tulip mania for Twitter.

If it’s mainstream consumer adoption you’re looking for, after the buzz starts to fade, there are a few ways to pursue continued growth:

  • If there’s even a hint of a zeitgeist about your product, use alt-PR and event marketing to try and convert your niche tech buzz into mainstream consumer buzz. Here I’m thinking of the way the founders of MySpace, YouTube and Digg ‘accidentally’ became rock stars overnight. Yeah, like that really happens.
  • If you need to fundamentally change consumer behaviour (say, if you’re Netflix or Monster.com) guerilla advertising and smart TV ads may work best. Go talk to your backers about more cash.
  • If you’re just trying to get consumers to switch from the product or service they use now to your product or service, keep consuming pageviews and growing time-per-month, sadly, you can’t beat ugly, dirty, sh*tty, boring, may-i-outsource-this-please SEO.

I hate SEO as much – or more than – the next guy, but it does work. They’ll show you the graphs (stretch) and detailed spreadsheets (yawn) to prove it, if you give them half a chance. Goodness me, is that really the time? [gets up and runs for the door...]