SEO Playbooks for Founders
Organic-growth tactics from founders who built real search traffic — programmatic pages, content that ranks, and the link-building that actually moved the needle. Every entry is sourced from a founder interview.
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“I use Google Search Console for analyzing keywords, CTR, and positions. I use Google Keyword Planner for predicting volumes for keywords when I want to write some content.”
Pick content topics from Search Console impressions, then size with Keyword Planner
Before writing content, check Search Console for keywords already gaining impressions and use Keyword Planner to forecast volume. This keeps SEO work tied to demonstrated demand rather than guesses about what might rank.
“if you have a SAS that is horizontal in nature and you want to create the landing pages to appeal to 100 200 300 400 500 different verticals where your stask applies I think you can maybe create 10 of those pages or 20 of those pages yourself and then use programmatic SEO to do the rest”
Programmatic SEO only works on top of a hand-built foundation
Programmatic SEO isn't a shortcut. Hand-write 10-20 vertical landing pages first, grounded in real customer research and value-prop alignment, then let programmatic fill in the remaining hundreds. Skip that hand-crafted base and Google demolishes the site.
“Right now we get around 50,000 clicks from Google every month and almost 90% of it is because of these free tools. We get around 300 leads, majority of these leads are from Google. This is the easiest, low cost, low effort way to drive traffic to your SaaS product.”
Build ~50 free micro-tools — 90% of Google traffic comes from those tool pages
Bhanu built nearly 50 small free tools (PDF-to-markdown, chatbot name generator, etc.) each targeting a single low-KD keyword. They now pull 50K monthly Google clicks and ~300 leads, with 90% of his Google traffic coming from these tool pages rather than a blog.
“Go to Ahrefs keywords explorer and leave this as blank, just click search. Then apply filters: include 'AI' and 'generator', add a KD filter of less than 10, then a volume filter of at least 1000 monthly search volume. Now I see all the AI generators that have very low keyword difficulty.”
Ahrefs keyword filter stack: blank search, include term, KD under 10, volume over 1000
Bhanu's exact discovery flow is a blank Ahrefs search, then layered include-term, KD<10, and volume>=1000 filters. The blank-search trick surfaces keywords you'd never think to type, and the KD<10 ceiling lets any new domain rank without backlink work.
“Going into subreddits of books, I would create a ChatGPT for their book. It was free, I was losing money on this. The only point of doing this is to have my domain opened by a lot of people so I get more domain authority.”
Burn money on free niche giveaways to harvest domain authority
Giving away small, hyper-targeted versions of the core product — a chatbot for a specific book, influencer, or community — burns money short-term but seeds links and traffic that lift domain authority. Treat the free instances as SEO and distribution, not a feature.
“For some keywords Google also shows videos — like YouTube videos. So you can post a YouTube video and you can rank pretty high.”
Rank YouTube tutorials in Google for technical keywords your text page cannot
A third-party YouTube tutorial about the product converted paying customers, which proved video is an underused SEO channel. For technical products, ranking a YouTube tutorial can be easier than ranking a text page on the same keyword.
“You can start to see a lot of blog posts around what you are building — so I see tons of SEO just from people writing about how to use Postiz or putting a review somewhere. There are also tons of options to list your product in different directories that have a very high domain authority.”
Open source compounds SEO via dev blog posts and high-DA OSS directories
Open source produces compounding SEO for free: developers write tutorials and reviews on their own blogs, and dozens of high-DA OSS directories accept listings. Both feed organic search without any outreach effort from the founder.
“The organic traffic — I've got multiple posts on Reddit: how to build a resume, the top 10 questions I get during a job hunt, how to interview, how to negotiate salary. That's a big SEO hack — just piggyback off of Reddit's incredible SEO.”
Piggyback on Reddit's massive SEO authority — write helpful posts, not promotional ones
Reddit ranks for almost every long-tail informational query. Posting genuinely useful, deep answers on the right subreddit borrows that domain authority, and the posts keep delivering organic traffic for years without any backlink work of your own.
“We acquire those customers through word of mouth, social media, and a big part of that is actually our programmatic SEO campaigns where we bring in over 30,000 views a month just from Google.”
Programmatic SEO drives 30K monthly Google visits on top of word of mouth
A programmatic SEO campaign sends over 30,000 monthly visits from Google, sitting alongside word of mouth and social as a top acquisition channel for a $30K/month SaaS. Scaling page generation around the niche turns organic search into a durable, compounding source of customers.
“App Store optimization is basically editing your app store metadata — like keywords, app name or subtitle, or even the screenshots… I'm focusing on the habit-tracker keyword, and that's why I put it right at the start of my app name.”
Put your priority ASO keyword at the very start of your app name
Identify one priority keyword in the category and place it at the very start of the app name. Pair with keyword research in Astro or App Figures, and a top-five ranking for that term drives enough organic traffic to compete with much larger brands without a marketing budget.
“If you manage to secure a good ranking on the App Store, you don't need a big marketing budget and you can compete with bigger brands.”
A top-five App Store ranking removes the need for a marketing budget
Putting the primary keyword at the front of the app name and stacking five-star reviews drives a top-five ranking on the category's most-searched term. A strong organic ranking on the store becomes the acquisition engine, removing the need for paid spend to compete with incumbents.
“A lot of people do not know that if you create a YouTube video with the same search intent and optimize it for Google, your YouTube videos will rank. 22% views on our YouTube channel comes from Google search. The optimization is very simple: have the keyword in the title, in the description, and the first 30 seconds of your transcript.”
Optimize YouTube videos for Google search — 22% of channel views come from Google
Ranking a blog post on Google requires backlinks and domain authority, but YouTube videos can rank on Google without either. Put your target keyword in the title, description, and first 30 seconds of the transcript — Google will surface the video for how-to queries, especially in niches where users prefer video tutorials over blog posts.
“Inside Ahrefs I have a filter — anything with a keyword difficulty of less than 20 and a search volume of greater than 500 is a very good combination, especially if you're a new website. You don't have a lot of domain authority, so don't go after high volume, high competition keywords. Focus on low volume, high intent, low competition.”
Filter Ahrefs to KD under 20 plus volume above 500 for early SEO wins
Aayush sets a strict Ahrefs filter — KD under 20 paired with monthly volume over 500 — to surface keywords a low-authority site can actually rank for. He buys one month of Ahrefs ($129), burns the credits researching 30-50 topics, then writes against that list for a full quarter. New domains can't out-muscle high-DR sites on head terms, but they can win the long tail.
“We were just writing helpful articles, support articles based on the questions customers were getting. We wrote an article on how to create OpenAI API keys — just screenshots, do this, do this. We didn't realize we ranked number one on Google for 6 to 8 months. We accidentally realized Google is actually a genuine inbound traffic channel.”
Write support articles for existing customers — one accidentally ranked #1 for 6 months
Elephas's SEO engine started by accident: they wrote plain-English support articles answering real customer questions (like 'how to create OpenAI API keys') and one ranked #1 for 6-8 months. That free traffic taught them which adjacent queries to target next. The lesson: your customer support inbox is a free keyword research tool, and utility articles compound into product-intent listicles.
“As long as you can add net new information to the internet, you will win with SEO. Bring your personal insights, your user data, your market intelligence. You're not just regurgitating what the internet already has. We're getting a lot of AI traffic — ChatGPT, Claude, all the AI answer engines are referencing our articles, and that audience is even more high intent because they've already made up their minds about buying.”
Add net-new information to the internet — that is what AI engines cite
Aayush uses AI as a research assistant to scaffold what's already ranking, then layers in proprietary insights, user data, and personal flavor so the post adds something new. That originality is what ChatGPT and Perplexity now cite — and citation traffic converts faster because the user arrived with intent already formed.
“I'll create a table with keyword as the main column, then volume, keyword difficulty, how much effort it's going to take to build this tool, and how relevant this free tool is to my main product. Then I prioritize tools that have high volume, low keyword difficulty, easy to build, and highly relevant to my product.”
Score every candidate tool on volume, KD, build effort, and product relevance before building
Before writing code, Bhanu logs each candidate keyword in Notion with four columns: volume, KD, build effort, and product relevance. He also drafts the CTA back to the paid product per tool. Only the top-scoring combinations get built, which is why the funnel actually converts.
“Use other localizations — for example if you were to add keywords to Mexican Spanish, those same keywords would be indexed for the US app store and have the same weight as the native US English localization.”
Add Mexican Spanish localization to inject more US App Store keywords for free
Apple indexes additional localizations (Mexican Spanish, UK English, Australian English) for the same store. Filling those extra 100-character keyword fields effectively multiplies your usable US keyword inventory at zero cost — a non-obvious ASO quirk that doubles keyword surface area without changing what users actually see.
“Different cities use different terminology — so for example in New York you've got the MTA subway, in Chicago you have the CTA L train. Once I started adding these kind of keywords I found that downloads increased substantially.”
Use local insider vocabulary (MTA, CTA L-train) in per-city ASO
Generic terms like 'transit' lost to the way locals actually phrase it. Adding 'MTA', 'CTA L train', and local equivalents to title + subtitle + 100-char keyword field per locale drove the bulk of Mumigo's 5M downloads. Pair the keywords with per-city screenshots so each user sees their own network in the store listing.
“Search for terms, keywords and phrases around what your app does by typing in the first few characters into search — you'll see a list come up. By looking at those lists I was able to determine what are the most high impact keywords people are searching for.”
Mine App Store autocomplete for the long-tail keywords users actually type
Free ASO keyword discovery: type the first few characters of a query into App Store search and read the autocomplete dropdown. Most users tap entry 1 or 2, so those suggestions are the actual high-intent queries. Target the specific long-tail entries — lower volume but easy top-5 ranking, which then lifts you for broader terms.
“we ended up creating SEO pieces at the top middle as well as the bottom of the funnel and in practice what that meant in the bottom of funnel is detailed comparison pages pitting Super Demo against our competitors and when I mean competitors I mean every competitor that you can find in your space because that's the easiest way to piggyback off of their traffic”
Create comparison pages against every competitor to piggyback their search traffic
Comparison pages capture buyers already in evaluation mode — the highest-intent traffic available. By targeting every discoverable competitor, Super Demo established early search rankings and LLM citations without waiting to build domain authority, since each page inherits relevance from the competitor's established brand.
“I realized I needed to do SEO stuff. I started to think about what kind of blog posts I could write that users can find interesting and related to notion and Google Sheets. That's right now one of our main traffic channels.”
SEO blog posts on niche keyword pairs become the top traffic channel
The Google Workspace marketplace provided initial installs, but Leandro quickly identified that organic search could compound over time. He built a content strategy centered on intersection keywords between Notion and Google Sheets, turning the blog into the primary ongoing traffic source.
“Set up a landing page under a warm domain — a domain from a different business that you've already owned and that has been indexed with Google. Once a page is created, go to Google Search Console and request the indexing of that page. That way you make sure this page is literally indexed within 24 hours.”
Warm domain plus Search Console request indexes validation page in 24 hours
A key unlock in their validation approach was avoiding brand-new domains, which can take months to rank. By hosting the fake landing page on an aged domain and manually requesting indexing in Search Console, Joseph had real buyer traffic within a day. A billion-dollar-revenue company booked a call within weeks.
“I went to Ahrefs, found this keyword, saw it has search volume but no difficulty, so I put this as the H1 — this is the main keyword that Google will index. Once we launched our actual website for Setter, within a week we ranked on page one on Google and now ranked number one worldwide for this keyword.”
Zero-difficulty keyword as the sole H1 delivers page-one ranking in a week
Rather than targeting competitive terms, Joseph searched Ahrefs for keywords with real search volume but negligible SEO difficulty and made that phrase his landing page's sole H1. The minimal-copy page ranked on page one within a week of the real product launch.
“what you want here is do sustainable things that are able to help you scale much further which in my opinion are SEO ads and affiliation you can set up once and can scale to crazy high limits”
Scale Past Social Media Using SEO, Ads, and Affiliates Together
Tibo distinguishes between hustle-dependent channels like social media and build-once-scale-forever channels: SEO, paid ads, and affiliate programs. Outrank grew from $20K to $200K MRR only after layering in all three once social alone stopped sustaining the growth rate.
“update your Play Store assets Right so that's where most of the win is because Google App Campaigns use your Play Store assets Your screenshots your app title your subtitle your description Make sure they're great”
Treat Your App Store Listing as Your Most Important Ad Creative
Google App Campaigns pull directly from your Play Store listing, meaning your app screenshots, title, and description double as ad creative. Founders who neglect ASO are effectively running campaigns with weak assets — optimizing the store listing is the highest-leverage SEO move for Android growth.
“65% of traffic comes from YouTube search how to create a Wikipedia page how to make a Wikipedia page 20% of the traffic comes from Google search not only does a video rank on YouTube it also ranks on Google and I can go on to the LLM type of things because nowadays we see a bunch of our videos being recommended in these LLMs”
Publish Evergreen YouTube Videos That Rank on Google and LLMs Too
YouTube videos can simultaneously rank on YouTube search, Google search, and increasingly appear in LLM recommendations, creating a triple-channel distribution effect. An evergreen video posted years ago can still deliver 300 views per day without any additional effort. Prioritizing evergreen topics compounds returns over time in a way no other content format matches.
“if you don't understand your customer or what they're searching for and how they describe their problems then you're just building fast in the wrong direction”
Validate your idea against real search demand before writing any code
Creator Hunter maps directly to high-intent search queries like 'best way to hire TikTok influencers' — terms with real volume and manageable competition. Finding keyword-to-product fit before building ensures the landing page and product copy already speak the language buyers type into Google. It's idea validation and SEO strategy in one step.
“the fact that they were only getting their customers through SEO i thought this is the product for me i'm going to do this exact same thing”
Validate a business idea by confirming it runs entirely on SEO
Adrian saw that the original scraping API had reached $30K MRR with fewer than 100 customers — all acquired purely through SEO. Rather than viewing SEO dependence as a weakness, he recognized it as a durable, low-cost acquisition channel he could replicate. The insight is to use SEO-driven revenue in acquisition broker listings as a filter for businesses worth cloning.
“People search for things like trim video, crop video. There's actually about 500 of these search terms. So I built a landing page for every single one.”
Build One Landing Page Per Search Term to Dominate Long-Tail SEO
With zero budget, Saba catalogued ~500 long-tail video-tool queries, built a dedicated page per term, and paired each with a YouTube video — brute-force SEO that took Veed.io from $0 to $1M ARR in year one.
“This is an industry 95% of you don't even realize exists.”
Pick a Market Where Google Searches Return Zero Useful Competitors
Parakeet Chat operates in a niche with almost no indexed competitors — meaning any content Jordan publishes faces virtually no domain authority competition and can rank with minimal effort. Finding a market invisible to most builders compounds SEO returns without a content team.