For startups and growing businesses who lacking a big marketing budget, an inbound marketing program can be the key to cost-effective growth, and no inbound marketing program is complete without a search engine optimization (SEO) component.

For a lot of non-technical entrepreneurs, SEO can be intimidating. But, it doesn’t have to be.

While you still need to invest in great content and ensure your site is SEO friendly from a structure perspective to succeed online, optimizing for search engines can actually be a relatively painless process. A well developed SEO strategy can be executed in a little as one hour from week-to-week.

Here are 3 important elements your week-to-week SEO strategy should include.

1. SEO Tools

Using an SEO tool (or several) is a great first step of any SEO strategy, as they help you monitor your progress over time. The internet is littered with free tools (don’t miss this post on 100 free SEO tools) that can be extremely valuable for SEO, but investing in a premium tool like Moz is worth the rather minuscule cost. On a week-to-week basis, be sure to keep your tool settings up to date to get the most value from your efforts.

2. Content & On-Page Optimization

The entire purpose of search engines is to connect people with great content that meets their needs. Make a habit of skimming your content (including website copy, blog posts, white papers, ebooks, videos, etc.) each week to ensure your keywords and content is up to date. Make a habit of tweaking your content to target ‘long-tail’ keywords that add the most value. Go through old posts and update meta descriptions and keywords. But remember, while keyword optimization is important for SEO, your website is still fundamentally about building relationships with people. Don’t overstuff or sound like a robot. To get started, use tools like Google’s recently updated Keyword Planning Tool as part of your week-to-week content and on-age optimization effort.

As great as content and on-page optimization is for search engine optimization, links are what are truly valuable when it comes to SEO. Search engines love social proof, and in the eyes of search engines that social proof manifests itself in the form of links to your website from other websites. Here’s a great list of 32 white hat (the good kind) ways to build links to your site from HubSpot. The long and short of it? Create great content and SEO will take care of itself.

If you’d like to discuss more about SEO basics for startups and learn how a simple SEO strategy can help your startup or growing business can get found more often on Google, Yahoo, and Bing, feel free to contact us at [email protected].