Greg Sterling’s post today on the LA Times article about a shakeout for Internet start-ups should be a 3am wake up call for start-up CEOs. And one of their first calls should be to a SEO expert.

I do a lot of work for start-ups (with and without venture capital funding) so I am probably biased towards believing that they should prioritize SEO, but most of my early-stage clients come to me after they have been in business for a year or so, they have completed the first rev of their service and now they are looking to take it to the next level.

This is a backwards way of doing things.

If you are launching a business that relies on the Internet to find customers and you are not implementing search engine optimization techniques from the get-go, I think you are making a grave mistake. Granted, the product needs to be the top priority but this doesn’t mean you can’t still bake SEO in while you are building it.

Would you build a house and call in a foundation expert after you had finished?

The cost and pain of retrofitting is high. You have spent a year spending money building your dream and you have likely not done enough thinking about how to get people to find your dream, let alone spend money on it. Now you have to spend more time and money to fix the problem and time and money are running out.

In this day and age I am continually surprised that companies and their investors are not insisting on a SEO plan that is ready on day one.

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2 Response Comments

  • 2ndTier  April 8, 2008 at 12:32 pm

    Great post! I totally agree with you Andrew..It is really important to have an SEO plan right away..even during the time you are still building your site..also make sure that you have a clear idea of what your goals are for your site..so you’ll know the SEO strategies that you might need..^^

  • Andrew Shotland  April 8, 2008 at 2:17 pm

    Your always first tier with me bud 🙂