I wanna share all my startup experience, one topic at a time,
Today it's ---SEO---
In the past years, I generated over 1B impressions and 1M clicks from SEO.
Everything I've done:
📁 Domain names
↳ Use: .com, .org, .dev, .ai, .io
↳ Use keyword-like naming, e.g. osssoftware dot org
↳ Max 14 letters in a domain name
↳ No “-” or “_”
↳ One topic per domain when possible
↳ Pick www or non-www and stick to that one version (one redirects to another one)
📁 Tech SEO
↳ Make sure the page renders HTML when bots make requests
↳ One way to check it:
↳ Drop your URL into Claude
↳ Ask if it’s doing everything right for tech SEO
↳ There are many more details, but really, Claude or Codex will lay it all down for you if you show it your website
↳ HTTPS on
↳ Mobile-friendly
↳ Fast enough that it doesn’t feel broken
↳ PageSpeed Insights is enough
↳ Open GSC web-vitals and if it's green then all good
↳ Short, stable URLs
↳ Url slug should match the meta title and h1
↳ No random strings
↳ One H1 per page
↳ Unique title + unique meta per page
↳ Image alt text on anything that matters
↳ Canonical URL on every indexable page that has no query string in it
↳ Fix 404s and redirect chains
↳ No orphan pages
↳ Every important URL should have at least one internal link pointing to it (seogets shows all such pages)
📁 Indexing
↳ Add sitemap.xml to Google Search Console
↳ See if all the pages are indexed
↳ If not, run
@indexrusher
↳ Do the same for Bing and Yandex via indexrusher
↳ robots.txt should be there and allow your public pages, again, ask chatgpt to check your robots.txt
↳ Request indexing in GSC for new pages or run indexrusher to automate this
↳ Check Coverage / Pages reports
↳ Fix “crawled – currently not indexed” on pages that should rank
↳ Don’t waste crawl budget (don't create too many pages, too many folders, tags, groupss...at least right away, you better do it later once the first bulk is indexed)
📁 Analytics
↳ Google Search Console
↳ Ahrefs small plan
↳
@seogets +
@DataFast_
↳ Once a week, look at:
↳ Queries with impressions but few clicks (take the queries pointing to these pages and embed them into h1 and meta title)
↳ Pages that used to get clicks and then decayed (update the content here)
📁 Low hanging fruit
↳ Pages already in positions 8–20
↳ Those are closer to page 1 than any new article
↳ Add the exact query(if makes sense) to H1 / title / H2
↳ Add one missing section the current top results have
↳ Queries with lots of impressions and almost no clicks
↳ Rewrite title + meta, keep the keyword
↳ Old pages that already get a little traffic
↳ Update them before writing a new one (google kinda loves to see pages being regularly updated)
↳ Pages Google knows but didn’t index
↳ Request indexing manually page by page, or run
@indexrusher (if it doesn't help, remove them, cuz google wont index them ever)
↳ Thin pages fighting each other for the same query
↳ Keep the stronger URL
↳ Merge or 301 the weaker one
📁 Quick 5min SEO hacks
↳ Paste a URL into GSC → URL Inspection → Request indexing
↳ Put the target keyword in the first 60 characters of the title
↳ Add the main query into the H1 if it’s missing
↳ Add 2 internal links from old posts to the page I want to push
↳ Add alt text to the first image on the page
↳ Add a 3-question FAQ at the bottom using GSC queries
↳ Submit / resubmit sitemap.xml in GSC
↳ Search site:mydomain and see if the pages are indexed and how they look like
↳ Google my brand + product keyword
↳ If a page mentions me with no link, ask them to add one
↳ Ask ChatGPT “best tool for [keyword]”
↳ Open the cited URLs
↳ Email those authors the same day (offer them either money or a link exchange)
↳ Post the article URL on X / LinkedIn / Reddit with the keyword in the first line
↳ Drop the URL into Claude: “what 5 on-page fixes can I do in 5 minutes?”
📁 Blog
↳ Write 1 good blog post a week
↳ Do it manually with some AI assistance
↳ Focus on the most promising keywords where you already rank high
↳ Use
@seobotai to generate more blog articles
↳ See if some of them get traction
↳ Manually turn the promising ones from AI-generated into high-quality human-made articles
↳ Before writing, search Google for the keyword
↳ Match the format that already ranks
↳ Answer the question better than the current top 5
↳ Put original stuff in the article
↳ Screenshots
↳ My own numbers
↳ What I actually tried (basically ensure google that this article comes from a human's own experience)
↳ Refresh old posts that already get impressions
↳ Update the date only if the content actually changed (avoid hacks here, do real updates)
↳ Useful page types on top of the weekly post:
↳ “best X”
↳ “X vs Y”
↳ “X alternatives”
↳ “how to” for the exact job my product does
📁 Backlinks
↳ Ask ChatGPT: “What’s the best tool for...”
↳ See the URLs it used to form the response
↳ Reach out to all those authors
↳ Ask them to include my URL in exchange for money or a backlink from you
↳ Do the same in Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini and Grok
↳ Search Google for your keywords
↳ Find the pages that already rank
↳ Do the same as above
↳ List on as many directories as possible using
@listingbott
↳ Link all my pages across all my websites when possible
↳ Do internal linking on each site too
↳ Between blog articles
↳ Between pages
↳ Extra places that still work:
↳ Guest posts on sites that already rank for my keywords
↳ “best tools” roundups
↳ Unlinked brand mentions
↳ Search Google for my brand name
↳ Ask them to turn the mention into a link
↳ When I link out or guest post, I want the page to have:
↳ Real traffic
↳ A topic close to mine
↳ A link that looks natural on the page (avoid spam at all cost)
📁 Social media SEO
↳ Social media gets indexed instantly
↳ Reddit
↳ X
↳ Substack
↳ LinkedIn
↳ Monitor hot, growing keywords and trends
↳ Google Trends
↳ Radar on X
↳ Produce posts around those trends
↳ Place some of the product links inside
↳ Find relevant social media posts via Google Search
↳ Plug my product into the comments when it brings some value
↳ No spam
↳ Put the keyword in the first line of the post
↳ Turn each good blog post into (and link back to the original url with a backlinks, cuz social media backlinks in my experience have really high weight for google):
↳ 1 X thread
↳ 1 LinkedIn post
↳ 1 Reddit answer where it actually helps
↳ Reply under bigger posts in my niche
↳ Useful reply first
↳ Link only if it adds something
📁 AI search
↳ Same game as SEO
↳ Ask ChatGPT / Claude / Perplexity / Gemini:
↳ “What’s the best tool for [my keyword]?”
↳ “Best alternatives to [competitor]”
↳ See if they mention me
↳ If not, look at who they mentioned and get onto those same pages by paying them or doing a link exchange
---
That's it for now.
I'll share the next topic in my next tweet. What should it be?
Also, i put it all in great details into my Founder Guide:
guide.johnrush.me/