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Search engine optimization is an area of digital marketing that involves using certain tactics to help your website climb the search engine results pages for queries relevant to your business.

Focusing on boosting your SEO should be a key part of your plan to build an audience, as it can help you to reach a lot more of your target customers.

In this guide, we are going to outline 7 different tips for improving your on-page SEO and improving your site’s search engine visibility. Read on to find out more.

What is on-page SEO?

When we talk about on-page SEO, we’re referring to changes you can make to your own website in order to boost your search engine rankings. This can involve writing optimized copy, creating SEO-friendly content, and e...

The year I turned 37, my heart stopped. Not figuratively, I mean it actually stopped beating.

We were in the early days of launching Startups.com, and I was at lunch with our team. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but something just didn't feel right, so I told the team I was going to head home and lay down. As I was driving home, I called my wife and told her "I'm heading home, something feels off..."

And as I said those words, my heart stopped — while driving. My world went black.

For anyone that has had their heart stop, you can't ignore it because, well, you're sorta dead. In my case, I came to quickly, recovered the car, and drove the next few minutes home. As soon as I got home I phoned my co-workers (who were 5 minutes away) and...

One day we wake up and realize our startup is working great for everyone but us — the Founders.

What the hell happened? We started out with big dreams of building our dream job, creating true financial independence, and just being able to do whatever we wanted on our own terms. That sounded great, right?

Yet here were are, spending our days at everyone else's behest. Our days and schedules are driven by the needs of staff, customers, and investors, all of whom mean well, but have essentially put our own goals and needs well into the back seat, and in some cases, forgotten about altogether.

When was the last time we got paid first (or at all)? Or took a vacation without being pulled away 100x by everyone else's needs? Or spent our day the wa...

Founders won't change people's personalities, we can only manage them. And that's where we fail over and over.

How often do we get frustrated by someone in our organization that we just wish we could change? They lack motivation, discipline, or they just don't play well with others. In our Founder minds, we just need this one inspirational heart-to-heart talk, or some Karate Kid montage, where they come out the other end a changed and improved human.

We have a hard time believing we can't "manage" our way into the outcome we're looking for, but what we're actually missing is that there are certain aspects of humans that go beyond what we can manage in the first place. And our lack of recognition of this boundary creates a colossal waste of ...

The worst time to get tired in a race is at the end.

Now, imagine we've just run a marathon (it's called a startup) and at the very end of that marathon is the finish line (it's called an exit), but we're too tired to make it across. Can you imagine a worse time to be out of energy than the moment where we're just about to win the race?

Yet many Founders, by the time we get to our most important milestone (the sale), just have nothing left. So we capitulate. We agree to silly terms, or unrealistic expectations, not because we think it's a good deal, but because we just want to be done with any deal. We're incredibly vulnerable, and that's incredibly dangerous.

"But I Just Want to be Done With it!"

Look, I get it. By the time we're teeing up...

The one thing everyone remembers about a relationship is how it ended.

As Founders, if we're around long enough, we're going to see the end of a boatload of relationships, and as such if we're not keenly aware of how important it is that we end those relationships gracefully, we're going to end up with a whole lotta angry exes.

There's really no way around this. Unlike our lives as an employee, where it was just us and our boss, when we are the boss, we're at the center of so many important relationships. Whether it's investors, staff, customers, partners, even the media — all of those relationships have a cost, and when they end, those costs actually multiply.

Later on in life, we learn how important it is to have "good breakups" because w...

The moment we sell our startup — the party is over.

Sure, we'll throw an actual party to thank everyone for taking the ride with us. We're going to issue well-crafted statements internally and externally about how this new partner is what we've been waiting all long for, regardless of whether it actually was.

But once those momentary celebrations subside, we're going to look around at what's left like a frat house after an all-night rager and think "Well damn, now what?" We worked so hard to get to this point, we often have no idea what would happen to the startup once it reached that penultimate moment. But, we're about to find out.

Waking Up Next to a Stranger

By the time we've signed the deal and watched that big wire land in our account...

The best way for Founders to gain power is to create it for themselves.

When I was a kid, I spent my whole existence feeling powerless, like all of my needs and dreams were tied to someone else's rules. I dreaded that feeling, but at every turn the reinforcement of the power dynamic was there, whether it was from my parents, my teachers, or Leeno who owned the pizza place that I worked at when I was 14. They had the power, they had the say. All I could do was make the best of their rules.

And if my adolescence taught me anything, it's that I absolutely hate being told what to do.

While I was a happy kid, I was miserable at my station in life. I thought I'd be the unwilling pawn in someone else's game, always working just smart enough to ma...

I don't remember going to college. I know I went, but I don't remember anything about my college experience, because unlike everyone else, I was too busy working on my startup.

I remember rollerblading (1990s!) across the quad to class on a beautifully sunny day and watching a bunch of my friends playing volleyball and having an amazing time. I wanted to play so badly, but I didn't. I had to get through class so I could skate back to the office for an all-night coding session on a new client project.

This isn't a story about how that effort paid off (it did), this is a story of how badly I regret never having played that day. It's a story of how so many of my life experiences were mortgaged for the sake of building my startup, and how looki...

Show me a startup that was once hot and I'll show you a Founder that got totally distracted by their own bullshit. As Founders, we're in the business of making dreams come true — particularly our own — so when everyone around is telling us how amazing we are, it's really hard to wake ourselves up and realize none of it is real.

Once hot startups all had a moment when everyone was praising what they did. The reason they are "once-hot startups" is that in the very moment they needed to be the most focused, they went off track believing their own press. It's a challenge that as Founders, if we understand, we can put ourselves in a position to avoid altogether.

When We're Up, We're Blind

When things are going well, we assume we've finally "made...