Search Engine Optimization

Also called SEO

Search engine optimization: earning visibility in unpaid search results by making your content and site match what people search for and what search engines reward.

Why it matters

SEO can become a compounding, low-cost acquisition channel, traffic that keeps arriving without paying per click. It is slow to build and easy to do badly, but for many startups it is the best long-term organic engine.

For example

A recipe app ranks first for thousands of dish searches, so it earns steady free traffic that keeps arriving without paying per click.

Go deeper

The Beginner's Guide to SEO Moz · guide The canonical, comprehensive primer that has taught a generation of founders how search actually works, from the ground up. Open moz.com →

Related terms

Also in Starting Up

See how founders actually handle this on Growing and marketing, part of the Starting Up hub.

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