Ross Simmonds’ Post

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B2B Marketing Agency CEO | Putting “Marketing” Back Into Content Marketing | Content Distribution & SaaS Focused

FOUNDER: “Investing in SEO is expensive and sometimes takes a long time to see ROI” FOUNDER DURING VC PITCH: “We’re in it for the long game. We want to be around for decades.” Spot the madness. Too many founders and CMOs think SEO is something you should add to your marketing mix AFTER building their website, AFTER launching their blog and AFTER selecting their content management system. This is a one way path to creating SEO debt. You should be investing at the very least in an initial consult to ensure that you’re not making mistakes that will haunt you for years to come. I’ve seen way too many startups launch with a CMS that isn’t great for search. I’ve seen way too many startups launch with the same title / headlines on every page of their site. I’ve seen way too many startups launch with the inability to have their URLs indexed by Google. Simple mistakes that have major consequences. Yet often overlooked because the founder and CMO don’t understand the impact. *Narrators Voice:* the impact could be 90% less traffic… 👀 Invest in SEO early and avoid the problems that could limit your growth tomorrow. SEO isn’t meant to be intimidating but it often feels that way for people outside the space. Don’t be intimidated. Sometimes all you need is the basics and that doesn’t always require anything more than a checkup from a pro. #SEO #contentmarketing #shapeculture

Justin Simon

I help you get more out of your content marketing, with repurposing and distribution | Publishing weekly at news.justinsimon.co

1y

Technical SEO is almost a foreign language at a lot of startups. And the more pages that get built, the more debt that racks up.

Mark Evans

Fractional CMO and strategic advisor for B2B and SaaS businesses (<$5M in sales). Brand Strategy and Brand Positioning Wizard. Podcaster, author, ex-newspaper journalist

1y

You could say the same thing about CEOs who embrace marketing after they've developed a product and hired a sales team. One day, they wake up and realize marketing needs to be part of the mix. By that time, they've scrambling to catch up.

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Jason Brewer

Helping SMBs grow from $1M to $10M in revenue. Marketing Agency CEO at Brolik.

1y

There's always tomorrow to start building for the future! 😅 Joking aside... you can't beat the compounding effect of SEO efforts over a long period just like you can't beat starting your stock portfolio or ROTH IRA when you are young - you win by consistently feeding and by maximizing your time invested.

Derek Nicholson

E-Commerce & Content Management Professional

1y

And yet, the majority of founders will still continue to have the bias towards “SEO after everything” for years to come. There will be great opportunities for anyone willing to invest in SEO early.

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Benny Mathur

Guest Faculty in New Media | Phd Research Scholar | Social Media Expert | SEO Professional | Director & Producer | Many more experience to add on

1y

SEO is always a long term game, if you need long term sustainability of the website or a YouTube channel seo you say. People need to understand that.

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🎯 Abhishek E.

Head of Marketing at Recotap

1y

Baby steps from day 1 can save a lot of pain and SEO debt for SaaS founders

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Omara Khaddaj

Marketing Consultant | Advising CEOs and Founders on winning marketing strategies | Sharing daily marketing and growth tips

1y

So true Ross. It doesn't have to be a full-blown SEO strategy or nothing at all. It never hurts to think things through right from the beginning.

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Vince Moreau

Founder of ScaleCrush - B2B Marketing Agency ╏ Evidence-Based-Marketing Advocate ╏ Cargo Bike Enthusiast

1y

At the same time, it's hard to do SEO "on the side". And most serious SEOs won't bother with initial consultations to audit a staging site to make sure you didn't forget to put metadescriptions and a proper heading structure. What I say to people is this: "Everything I'm going to tell you at this stage, you can get for free. If you want to invest in SEO, do it on your own terms. We'll speak again when you get to a point where you can spend :)

Kristin Tynski

Co-Founder at Fractl - Marketing automation GPT4 scripts, content marketing & PR case studies - 15 years and 5,000+ press-earning content marketing campaigns for startups, fortune 500s and SMBs.

1y

100% agree. Making it worse, many see PPC as a sustainable alternative for far too long. It's the old buying vs. renting situation. If organic search is going to *ever* play a major role in your inbound strategy, it needs to be started ASAP. Since most startups are looking for press anyway, there's a dual benefit to starting early with PR+Content based link building. Earn press attention while building massive domain authority via those links earned from highly trusted publications. Add in a robust onsite content strategy and aggressive publishing cadence, and startups can achieve sustainable organic search lead flow relatively quickly.

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Nicolás Forero

🔆 Economist | Aspiring VP of Communications | Advocate for poverty reduction through education | Millions in profit, funds, and awareness for 40+ companies | Graduate Student

1y

Distribute this everywhere until it's on everyone's minds. As I began working with earlier stage startups, and not so many SMEs, I noticed a big trend of (1) investing on sales and ads after raising a series A, (2) starting a formal competitor research process, (3) noticing there's a wide search gap between them and competitors, and (4) trying to gain the market share they have ignored in a few months with a rushed, prescriptive strategy.

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