21 lessons in SEO after growing Flexiple’s organic traffic from 4,000 to 40,000 in 6 months & revenue from 0 to $1mn 🧵
1/ SEO is the most reliable channel of traffic & arguably also leads.

With ~6 billion+ searches occurring each day, ignoring SEO is a very grave error by any marketer - don't make that mistake.
2/ SEO is also a great validator of your startup idea! 

If search phrases related to your idea actually have volume, it naturally indicates that there is a market for your offering.
3/ Biggest regret for Flexiple, was to start working on it late - it is a channel that takes time to deliver.

So, start & invest as early as possible!
4/ Don't wait for your product to be built before starting on SEO:

- Begin writing a couple of articles each week so that they rank by the time you launch

- This gives you users on the day of launch instead of a few months after it
5/ While it takes time, once it does start delivering its results are very consistent and, of course, free forever!

Just an estimate by Ahrefs (which I think is very conservative), we get $8k of traffic each month - for FREE :)
6/ Golden rule: Never write a single word before doing sufficient keyword research. @ahrefs is the best in this regard.

Our first 20 articles were not SEO optimised - they’ve been read by not more than ~100 people vs. our last 20 articles => 50k times.
7/ Further, all companies write articles. But few have them SEO optimised!

No point in investing time into articles that no one reads AND SEO traffic is the only channel that delivers over time.

So, inherently writing articles without SEO optimisation is just poor strategy.
8/ People assume that there’s a trade-off between writing quality content vs. SEO-optimised content.

Nope.

SEO optimised doesn’t mean poor quality content - it just means aligning your article with Google’s parameters while giving maximum value to the reader.
9/ While starting your blog, avoid hosting it on a subdomain. Subdomains are treated as separate websites - you don’t want that.

Pairing your main marketing website/ product with your blog is crucial.
10/ Your blog’s speed/ loading time is a very important metric in ranking too.

So while fancy images/ animations might make your website more pretty, they also negatively affect rankings. Maintain a good balance.
11/ Before starting the whole exercise, do a quick SEO audit. This is to ensure every page of your website follows SEO best practices.

Personally, my experience with @ahrefs' audit has been great.
12/ While it is possible to rank for keywords even without much Domain Authority, it is MUCH tougher.

So, along with investing in content, also work on building your website’s “domain authority” (DA).

Don’t know what DA is? I’ve explained it here.

13/ Backlinks still remain the only TRUE way of growing your website's authority.

Focus on getting only quality backlinks => backlinks from directory OR spam websites are not only useless but also detrimental!
14/ Further, a lot of content exists on the 100 ways of getting backlinks to your website. I’ve found that writing “guest posts” are the most reliable method.

It works because while you get a backlink, the other website gets free content - tangible upside on both sides.
15/ But "guest posts" are a highly involved channel which would require:
- Reaching out to a lot of websites
- Having to write quality content for them

So, avoid writing a guest post if you aren’t getting a backlink in return.
16/ A simple Google search can get you a great list of websites accepting guest posts in your industry.

A few good search phrases to find such websites:
- [your_topic] “guest post”
- [your_topic] “guest article”
- [your_topic] “write for us”
- [your_topic] inurl:contribute
17/ Target keywords that have:

- Low “Keyword difficulty”

- High “Monthly volume”

- At least one website in the Top 10 results with a “DA” lesser than that of your website’s

Here’s my thread giving a step-by-step explanation of that process:
18/ Add smart “call-to-action” boxes on your blog page that align with your ultimate goal - newsletter subscribes, signups or referrals, etc.

But DON’T fill your website with popups - users will drop-off which will lead to Google penalising your rankings.
19/ Internal linking is critical and entirely in your control - so, do it.

- Every new blog should receive few internal links
- If any new page starts ranking well, give links from it to others
20/ So, the process becomes:
- SEO audit
- Build your DA
- Do keyword research
- Write SEO optimised blogs
- Give internal links

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
21/ Finally, SEO growth is exponential in nature. So, don’t be disappointed with average results in the short-term.

Over time, you’ll rank for more keywords => increase your traffic & backlinks => leading to ranking more even more keywords!
That's it for this thread!

If you would like to see more such threads - retweet the first tweet 👇

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More from @KarthikS2206

4 Mar
SimpleSEO #3: Today, let's talk about Domain Authority (DA)!

- Google doesn't publicly share any "reputation score" of a website

- So, two companies @SEOmoz and @ahrefs share their interpretation of your website's credibility

👉🏽Note that this isn't endorsed by Google

Contd.👇🏽
2 of 3/

- It is a score out of 100 and is on a logarithmic scale => going from 20 to 21 is tougher than 10 to 11

- Getting backlinks from other quality websites improves DA

- If you've a new website OR haven't focused much on SEO, it is likely to be low (<30)

Contd.👇🏽
3 of 3/

- While unofficial, DA still reflects how difficult it is for you to rank for any keyword => Lower the DA tougher it is

- So, apart from writing content, you should focus on increasing DA

How? That's for the next thread!
Read 4 tweets
3 Mar
With 500+ likes & 100+ comments, it's clear that I should document the stories & lessons of growing Flexiple to $1mn!

So, in this tweet thread, I’ve outlined the 13 chapters (among others) that I plan to cover in the course & notion template.

Let’s go👇🏽

1/ Idea validation

Outline📘

- Finding the closest way to mimic your ultimate customer offering

- The plan is to invest the least amount of money or build minimally (ideally nothing), yet get a sense of the market

👉🏽 Also, a write-up of top case studies
2/ Finding a co-founder

Outline📘

- A co-founder isn’t necessary but very helpful

- Aligning on the “right” personality & the expectations you have of them is critical

👉🏽 I’ll also share my experience of finding my co-founders
Read 15 tweets
24 Feb
SimpleSEO #2:

SEO intimidates many!

In 8 tweets, I'll explain SEO using the analogy of a LIBRARY.

The characters:
👩🏽Librarian = Google
📘Books = All websites
🧔🏽Person searching for a book = Your potential customer

I'll connect it all in the end 🚀

Come on, let's go! Thread👇🏽
1/ Potential customer searches Google

This is equivalent to the person coming to the librarian and asking her to suggest the most relevant book on say "Photosynthesis" ('cause I'm a nerd😅).
2/ Google prepares the search results

The librarian now has to decide which books to recommend from a sea of books.

So, she does this by setting certain parameters to rank the various books.

Which parameters? 👇🏽
Read 10 tweets
22 Feb
How did we make $100k using GoogleSheets after 2 failed products?

Many asked me this. So, in 14 tweets, I cover Flexiple’s 1st year comprising:
- Product 1 & its failure
- Product 2 & its failure
- What went wrong
- Why/how GoogleSheets worked

Thread👇🏽

1 of 14/ Premise for Product 1

Our idea was simple: Connecting pre-vetted tech talent with companies.

Like most new entrepreneurs, we wanted to build for scale.

Manual processes just seemed foolish to us, so we decided that building a product was the answer.
2 of 14/ What was Product 1

The product would:

- Manage the entire onboarding flow of freelancers including tests, evaluations, interview scheduling, etc.

- Allow clients to share their requirements in a predictive fashion (just if-else conditions :P)

(contd.)
Read 16 tweets
25 Jan
SEO traffic increased 5x for Flexiple from July to December.

Here’s the 8 step framework I defined to achieve that, explained in step-by-step detail.

The only tools that we use are:
- @ahrefs
- Google sheets

So, let's get started 👇🏽
Step 1/

- Type a relevant industry keyword in @ahrefs' keyword explorer tab

- Keep the keyword short - NOT long-tail

- At this stage, you are just defining the kind of articles you want to write

- For e.g. If I want to write tech articles, I'd just search "Javascript" Image
Step 2/

- This is simple - go to the "Having same terms" tab

- You will get all results which have your keyword phrase in it

- For our e.g., "Javascript" will be included each time

- You can go back to Step 1 if you think the keywords are out of whack Image
Read 13 tweets
13 Jan
Getting started with #NoCode 101:

If you have been hearing a lot about NoCode but don't know where to start, here's some guidance.

I cover:
- Why NoCode?
- Popular tool stacks (& other tools)
- Where to start?
- Some use cases as a showcase

Let's go 👇🏽

#lowcode
1/ Why NoCode?

- Obvious: you don't need to know or learn how to code

- Anyone in your team can take up product building initiatives. No more "developer bottlenecks".

(contd.)
2/ Why NoCode? (contd.)

- Focus shifts to the goal the tech is meant to achieve rather than the tech itself: latter is a very common misstep!

- The underlying products you use also keep improving. So what you can achieve through them also increases proportionally.
Read 16 tweets

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