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.
91 tactics · page 2 of 4
“We have been using Typedream just to build no-code landing pages and do quick rapid SEO changes.”
Use No-Code Landing Pages for Fast SEO Iteration Without Redeploys
By decoupling marketing pages from the core Next.js app, the team can test headlines, keywords, and copy daily without touching production code. This low-overhead loop compounds SEO gains over time without engineering bandwidth.
“I started publishing blog posts and tutorials about how to password protect categories in Woo Commerce and because it was unique we got to the top of Google straight away and we got our first sales within a few days.”
Writing the Only Tutorial for an Unsolved Problem Gets You to Page One Fast
Because Katie's plugin solved a problem nobody else had solved, publishing tutorials about that exact problem produced immediate first-page rankings and sales within days of launch. Writing the only tutorial for an unserved keyword means Google has nothing else to rank, making the path to position one almost trivially short.
“Unlike Google it's almost impossible for you to get multiple high-ranking listings within Google — very possible on YouTube, and especially if you're doing this across multiple channels.”
Stack Multiple YouTube Rankings on the Same Topic to Dominate Search
On Google, one domain rarely dominates multiple top-three results for the same keyword. YouTube's algorithm works differently — one creator can rank several videos for variations of the same search query. Ben deliberately targets every phrasing of a problem and publishes separate videos for each, compounding his presence so that no matter how a prospect types the query, his face appears first.
“before my product is great I usually go for SEO and then the second most popular method I have is social media marketing”
Start Every New Product With SEO Before the Product Is Polished
Rather than waiting for a polished product to market, John treats SEO as the default early-stage distribution channel to bring in first users. Those early users then provide feedback that shapes the product into something worth organic word-of-mouth. This means SEO investment happens while the product is still rough, not after, compressing the feedback loop between traffic and improvement.
“Google's helpful content update plus AI overviews completely destroyed my business... that audience saved me”
Diversify Distribution Channels Before Google Algorithm Updates Destroy Revenue
Content sites relying on Google search traffic were wiped out when AI Overviews eliminated the need to click through to blog posts and recipe pages. The founder's pre-existing YouTube audience became a critical backup channel, generating most of the revenue for his next product launch. Building off-platform audiences before an SEO crisis is the only reliable hedge against algorithm-dependent businesses.
“What if I just have a better product like this industry exists I know people want this and that was the light bulb moment go find something that people already want and do it differently or better”
Enter an Existing Market and Differentiate on Product Quality Alone
Rather than educating the market from scratch, Ian found a category — offshore staffing — with proven demand and existing search behavior, then competed on service quality. This approach captures existing intent without needing to create it. The built-in word-of-mouth then compounds organic visibility as the brand gets mentioned across conversations and communities.
“affiliates chatbt if you ask the right questions you will get put up in Chadbt seo of course it's ranking quite high now like the app store itself brings in traffic as well people just searching for the tools it's very diverse”
Let ChatGPT Surface Your Tool by Answering the Right Prompts
When listing his traffic sources, Sebastian explicitly called out ChatGPT as a meaningful acquisition channel alongside traditional SEO, affiliates, and the app store. His phrasing — 'if you ask the right questions' — implies intentional optimization: structuring content and positioning so that AI assistants recommend the product when users ask relevant questions.
“if I play the game and I'm level 10 and I got to be level 100 to see the next thing then I'm like well maybe I'll play again to see what was behind that door so you got to build a curiosity in the user same way for YouTube video so yeah I need to be clickable social and replayable that's the formula”
Treat Replayability as the Algorithm Signal That Keeps Driving Traffic
Cole breaks down the three-part formula for top-100 Roblox games: clickable, social, replayable. Roblox surfaces games in its discovery algorithm based on engagement depth — the longer players stay and return, the more the platform amplifies the game organically, functioning identically to how YouTube ranks watch-time-heavy content.
“the really good thing with this one is all the traffic was from Facebook ads which means I can replicate it literally in a week because Facebook ads you just have to start it and you have the traffic”
Use Ad Traffic as a Shortcut When SEO Would Take Too Long
When analyzing a competitor app, Samuel checks Ahrefs to understand where traffic comes from. If a competitor relies solely on ads, he sees it as a fast-entry opportunity — he can clone the ad strategy and get customers within days rather than waiting months for SEO. Ad-dependent competitors signal an immediately exploitable channel.
“a habit tracker like Sebastian's that we had chatted with a few months ago that ranks well in ASO so iOS uh app store optimization.”
Use App Store Optimization as a Sustainable Moat Alongside Paid Channels
After the interview, host Pat Walls frames two winning strategies for crowded app categories: viral social media content (Evan's approach) or strong App Store Optimization. He presents ASO as a distinct, sustainable moat — a different growth vector that compounds organically and works independently of influencer spend.
“I looked for the keywords that I wanted to rank on like for example Skype alternative then I found the blog posts that were ranking there and tried to find the authors of those blog posts”
Reach Out to Blog Post Authors to Replace Dead Competitor Mentions
When Skype shut down, articles ranking for 'Skype alternative' suddenly had a dead link to replace. Dennis found the authors on X, LinkedIn, or email and asked to be added or swapped in. This got Yaphone listed on high-authority sites it could never have earned organically.
“I went to the app store and I searched up advice life advice I didn't really see any apps that could help me”
Validate App Demand by Searching the App Store Before Building
Before building Social Wizard, Kishi ran a simple search in the App Store for 'life advice' and found no satisfying results — confirming an unmet demand. This organic store-search behavior functions exactly like keyword intent research: real users actively looking for a solution signal a ready market. Finding the gap in existing listings gave him confidence to build.
“use SEO tools such as hrefs for instance If you have an idea try to find a keyword that people might be looking for this idea If it has a certain volume let's say more than thousand monthly searches or something and a low difficulty it means you're on to something because people are searching for something and there's not already thousand solutions for it”
Use Keyword Volume and Low Difficulty to Validate Ideas Before Building
Nico uses Ahrefs as his primary idea validation tool before building anything. He looks for keywords with over a thousand monthly searches and low difficulty as a signal that demand exists but supply hasn't caught up yet. This approach helps him avoid building in saturated markets and spot genuine white-space opportunities early.
“Dedicated landing pages free tools definitely still work really well on Google”
Launch Dedicated Landing Pages and Free Tools to Capture Organic Traffic
As part of his early growth stack, Nico credited dedicated landing pages and free tools as a consistent driver of organic traffic even before Neural Frames reached scale. He singled these out alongside Hacker News and personal branding as pillars of the growth flywheel that took the business to $100K/month.
“I introduced a gamified bonus system to our customer support team and right now we're tracking who gets more reviews We have the monthly leaderboard and we have all of these different raffles and actually my favorite bonus is a persuader of the month and what we do is we basically calculate the conversion rate of how many times you ask for a review and how many reviews you get”
Gamify Customer Support With Leaderboards to Drive Five-Star Review Conversion
With 95% of reviews coming from customer support interactions, Ericas built a leaderboard and raffle system that treats review conversion rate as a tracked KPI per agent. This turns every resolved support ticket into a ranking opportunity on the Shopify App Store. The system incentivizes agents financially while directly feeding the algorithmic signals that drive organic discovery.
“from 10K to 30K we really grew a lot off the back of these free code camp collabs which was basically me recording an 8hour course giving it to Free Code Camp for free so they can publish on their YouTube channel”
Donate Long-Form Courses to Established Platforms to Unlock Massive Reach
Rather than trying to build his own audience from scratch on YouTube, Lane piggybacked on Free Code Camp's existing authority and subscriber base by contributing free content. This gave boot.dev exposure to a massive, pre-qualified audience without ad spend. The growth from $10K to $30K monthly revenue was largely driven by this strategy.
“If you take study apps you can target physics AI, chemistry AI, math AI — these are different keywords but they are related to students. That gives me an opportunity after creating one app to quickly jump into the closely related keywords...For some apps I basically copy like 90% of the code which gives me the instant time for the building.”
Cluster Adjacent Keywords In One Audience So Each New App Reuses The Last
Max maps adjacent keywords around a single audience (e.g. students: physics AI, chemistry AI, math AI), so one built app becomes a template he respins for each sibling keyword. ASO learnings compound, code reuses, and what looks like 28 separate apps is really a few base templates fanned out across keyword clusters.
“I personally love to track my activities... I looked at the app store. There wasn't a great app that tracked your specific niche activity like a cold plunge like a sauna like a cold shower. And I figured I could build this experience...”
Pick Hyper-Niche App Store Gaps Where No Quality App Already Tracks The Activity
Pre's validation step is literally opening the App Store and searching for the hyper-specific activity he already does. If no quality app exists for the narrow use case, that's the green light — a low-competition ASO slot where a focused app can become the category top result fast.
“It is never ever ever ever too early to start writing content. Start writing landing pages, start writing blog posts... write competitor pages, alternative-to pages, get it out there as early as humanly possible. The longer it's up there the longer ChatGPT, the longer Google will start indexing it.”
Write Competitor And Alternative-To Pages Day One Because Indexing Is A Long Compound Curve
Mike treats content as a compounding asset that must start ticking immediately, funded by LTD cash. He specifically targets competitor and 'alternative to' pages because they capture commercial-intent traffic from people already shopping the category he copied — and both Google and LLMs need months to index them.
“We wanted to build something really really simple because SEO what helps it is specificity. So the more specific you can get like cold outreach email for some sector or whatever like for automation that's going to rank as high as it can faster than something general just like task magic automation.”
Win SEO With Hyper-Specific Satellite Tools Instead Of A Broad Tentpole Brand
Jeremy argues hyper-specific micro tools rank faster on SEO than broad parent products. Instead of fighting for 'automation,' he built Mail Lead, a narrowly scoped cold-outbound tool. Specificity alone pulled in organic traffic that the umbrella Taskmagic brand could never have captured.
“I made a guide on how you can convert an iPhone into a dumb phone... I basically showed with a really detailed step-by-step guide how you can make it so that you can only access like a few key apps on your iPhone... That article alone, it's one of the top performing guides that I've ever published and it's been read hundreds of thousands of times.”
Publish One Deep How-To Guide That Pulls Hundreds Of Thousands Of Organic Readers
Ben's core SEO strategy was well-researched, genuinely helpful long-form guides given away for free. A single deep tutorial aimed at a specific painful behavior outperformed everything else and drove millions of organic visitors over two years — depth beats volume for niches where readers are stuck on a specific job-to-be-done.
“my landing page copy was like completely tailored to Power AI users i call them out in my H1 and I call them out in multiple places on my website and this is very important and there's like tons of places where you can find how to structure your website”
Call Out Your ICP By Name In The H1 And Across Every Landing-Page Section
Pren credits getting the ICP right as the single biggest landing-page lever. Naming his ICP (Power AI users) not just in the H1 but across multiple sections kept the right visitor self-identifying as they scrolled — and lifted the page's conversion against the same organic and paid traffic that earlier landing pages couldn't convert.
“from signature we got from 0 to 1.6 million users mainly from seo we use the strategy around tools and templates and ranking for them high in search... we built a free online signature tool where you can type or handdraw your signature... we also wrote templates so we wrote marketing agreements and construction agreements and landlord agreements”
Rank Free Tools And A Library Of Templates To Drive 800K Monthly SEO Visits
Signaturely grew to 1.6M users almost entirely by ranking a free signature-drawing tool plus a library of contract templates (marketing, construction, landlord agreements). The free tool funnels searchers into the paid e-signature product, generating 800K visits per month from organic search alone.
“when you post them you don't want to just post it with the Tik Tok Watermark obviously that's like the most obvious thing but also you want to actually rewrite the text in the hook within each of these native platforms it helps with like the SEO of the video”
Rewrite The On-Screen Hook Natively When You Cross-Post To Each Platform
When reposting one video across Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts, David rewrites the on-screen hook text natively on each platform. This helps SEO inside each platform and avoids signaling that you're just farming clips from elsewhere.
“making sure that the product matches what the users are looking for they see on your product page they download the app they use it and then they use the same keywords to describe their experience via the user reviews that was like the holy circle and if you can get that loop going it I think it's a really strong presence for app store optimization”
Close The ASO Loop: Page Promise, In-App Experience, Review Keywords All Match
Anya treats ASO as a closed loop rather than a keyword exercise. When the product page promise, the in-app experience, and the language users naturally use in reviews all line up on the same keywords, the store algorithm reinforces itself.
“we have a niche tool right very niche a niche small enough that most big companies wouldn't really bother with it but for us as solarpreneurs perfect and I decided we will see if we can grab stuff that people are already doing in our niche and then combine our tool with it so if you uh look for countdown timer stream deck companions we uh created a documentation page that shows very precisely how you use our tool together with this integration for this physical device we also created a video and put it on YouTube”
Win Hyper-Specific SEO By Combining Your Tool With Tools Your Niche Already Uses
Lucas drives 50% of his traffic from Google by writing documentation pages and YouTube videos that combine his tool with adjacent products people in his niche already use, like Stream Deck. These hyper-specific keywords have low search volume but extremely high purchase intent because searchers have a concrete problem and want a solution.
“this is a a super niche keyword the way we find these keywords is we put up documentation put up articles and then we look with a sense for what do people actually click on and then double down”
Publish Documentation Broadly, Then Double Down On Whatever Actually Gets Clicked
Rather than upfront keyword research, Lucas publishes documentation and articles broadly, then watches which pages get clicks and doubles down on those topics. This let-the-data-speak approach surfaces the high-intent niche queries that big competitors ignore.
“Being a developer also means that I'm naturally bad at marketing. So I just didn't do any marketing the standard way. Also I simply didn't have the money for it. And my goal was also not to make money. But what was crucial were my friends and family especially at the beginning because I just asked everyone I know for reviews. Reviews are super important for an app on the app store to to get ranked at the top.”
Reviews Are The App Store Growth Lever When You Skip Marketing Entirely
Chris ran zero paid or standard marketing and instead optimized for App Store ranking through reviews. He bootstrapped social proof by asking friends and family first, then engineered in-app review prompts at moments users felt good.
“For the organic side we just focus on very bottom of the funnel keywords. We use tools like Ahrefs to find keywords with 300-800 monthly searches that have low competition but they are very very high intent. We just target terms like social media API, scheduling API for Twitter and things like that.”
Target 300-800 Search Volume Keywords With Low Competition And Bottom-Of-Funnel Intent
Mickey deliberately ignores high-volume head terms and chases small, boring keywords (300-800 searches/month) sitting at the bottom of the funnel. Low competition makes them rankable within months, and the buyer intent is so concentrated that even tiny traffic converts. This narrow keyword discipline produced $8K MRR in organic revenue alone.
“Our paid marketing is a very, very small part of our overall marketing mix. We really are focusing on App Store optimization — that's a huge lever for us on both the App Store and the Play Store.”
ASO on both stores is the primary lever when paid UA doesn't pencil
Lose It! grew through word-of-mouth and organic acquisition for 15 years. When they tried scaling paid, ROAS came in as low as 10% of predicted LTV — economically setting money on fire. They returned to ASO on both stores as the dominant non-organic lever, supported by a deliberately strong free product as the entry point.