Startup SEO with Fab: Recent Episodes
Fabrizio Ballarini
My name is Fabrizio Ballarini, work in Organic Growth at Wise. In May 2021 during a sabbatical leave, I am going to try build a long term business that will grow primarily via SEO. Starting from 0 and sharing daily highlights about my progress. I will cover multiple topics from putting a team together, choosing a brand, buying domains, setting up tech, producing content and web products as well as all aspects about monetising web traffic. Goal is to share my learnings with startup founders and SEOs in early stage companies to get SEO right from the very start to scale a new business.
My take on subject and how I went about it in last years both at Wise as well as my personal SEO projects Programmatic SEO is trending What is it? Wait.....It's not new Core principles of scaling landing pages - kw research pattern, data, template Kw research Database: CSV, actual DB, APIs How to build templates Doing it on different platforms https://www.wpallimport.com/ (WP all import), strapi, dev + DB Starting small get impression clicks Sitemaps, internal linking CMS vs custom code+db Scaling data and maintenance, APIs example if not static DB
First iteration of keyword research time vs making pages not perfect tools - semrush, ahref, keywordtool.io, keywordinsights.ai Structured vs non structured content templated content (landing pages, products, directories) structured competitors architecture work by template in a precise way but still reassess in future non structured content (blog long form) competitors articles + kw tools doing vs precision refine where to go and optimise kw research by series of articles not one by one don't go back until article it's at peak and you have more for the same series
recap differentiate by content type the approach don't waste too much time on day one vs launching pages understand best time for each content format on revisiting the kw research and targeting
After a long break and some exploration I am back on the project. Deciding between search and social it's a topic I went through during this slow phase. Started from securing social media handles How I thought about social as opposed to focus on search Evaluating search vs social opportunity and investment time frame A run through of social platforms and opportunities Feed based social platforms vs YouTube YouTube vs publishing SEO content Youtube if you plan to be serious about it in parallel with search.
Who to hire and how to operate when getting started with SEO in your Startup? In this episode I will cover main choices in building your first SEO team or self start on SEO with support of consultants or agencies. Traffic Think Tank SEO community - https://trafficthinktank.com/ Semrush community https://www.semrush.com/blog/ Ahrefs Blog https://ahrefs.com/blog/ Learning SEO by Aleyda Solis https://learningseo.io/ Startup Content Marketing chart by Kevin Indig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS-U6wsRkCA&t=172s
It's very easy to get excited about too many opportunities and end up not moving tangibly your core work. I decided to collect some activities I had to face early days that have close to little SEO impact in the short term. 1 - do them quick time box it 2 - hire someone pro at it 3 - skip and leave for later Canva - https://www.canva.com/colors/color-wheel/ Mark Christmastrees Business - https://christmastrees.co.uk/ https://twitter.com/iamrofe Em Candle business - https://www.hisocial.org/case-studies/launching-a-new-erotic-small-business-on-social-media https://twitter.com/asparajuice Shopify - https://www.shopify.com/ Semrush - https://www.semrush.com/ Ahrefs - https://ahrefs.com/ Adsense - https://www.google.com/adsense/start/ Amazon Affiliate - https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/ Google analytics - https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/ Google search console - https://search.google.com/search-console/about
Setting the ground for building a successful editorial team from the very start. How to research, produce and publish SEO content on your blog. My old presentation - https://www.slideshare.net/FabrizioBallarini/how-to-10x-organic-search-traffic-while-scaling-publishing-sustainably-116686903 Semrush intelligence tool by page - https://www.semrush.com/kb/497-organic-research-pages-report Semrush competitive tool - https://www.semrush.com/kb/496-organic-research-competitors-report Semrush keyword magic - https://www.semrush.com/kb/262-keyword-magic-tool Semrush SEO content template - https://www.semrush.com/kb/590-seo-content-template Sourcing writers - https://www.upwork.com/
After a WordPress MVP I went through few considerations in order to lay the ground for the future technical setup of my website. AWS - https://aws.amazon.com/ Nitropack - https://nitropack.io Next JS > https://nextjs.org
Picking a brand name is definitely one of the most sensitve subjects with long term impact on your business. Thinking about SEO first will save you money and time in future. In this episode I will cover everything from researching brand names to buying to domains and social media proporties to establish your online presence. Links to stuff I mention in the recording: Brand name generators - https://www.google.com/search?q=brand+name+generator Premium domains sellers - brandpa.com - squadhelp.com Domain marketplace - sedo.com Expired domains - https://www.expireddomains.net/ Nord VPN - https://nordvpn.com/ Wipo trademark search - https://www3.wipo.int/branddb/en/ Link Audit - semrush.com / ahrefs.com / majestic.com Web archive past content audit - https://web.archive.org/ Link to my sheet - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f9YSs3QjbntYeuJ-DZy60WXL15qdbk-ObzElAsp5jVE/ Google survey - https://surveys.google.com/your-surveys Escrow service - escrow.com
In this episode I will try to sum up how I approached the research and validated the potential of the business I am about to launch over the past 2 years. What areas I covered and what key challenges I tried to build confidence on. Links to stuff I mention in the recording: https://www.google.com/search?q=shared+hosting (pick a plan with unlimited add on domains and 1 click WP install) https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-all-import/ https://codecanyon.net/item/woocommerce-amazon-affiliates-wordpress-plugin/3057503 https://www.semrush.com/ https://search.google.com/search-console/about https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/ https://www.google.com/adsense/start/