AI Search & SEO Services / Tech Startups
SEO Consultant for Tech Startups
Paid CAC keeps climbing and investors expect an organic engine by Series A. I build the SEO channel that compounds while your competitors keep renting attention.
Tom Riley
SEO Consultant
I work with venture-backed tech startups, from seed stage to unicorn. Zego at a $1.1bn valuation, Beams and a string of London startups have used me to turn organic search into a compounding acquisition channel that lowers CAC while paid costs rise. With Beams I grew Google search traffic 300% in six months.
For a startup, SEO is the cheapest durable channel left. Paid stops the moment the spend stops, but rankings for your category and problem keywords keep producing after the invoice is paid. I focus on the commercial and problem-aware searches your buyers actually run, and I build the technical foundations and content that win them. AI search visibility follows from the same work as a growing bonus.
Why tech startups need an SEO consultant
Rising paid CAC makes an organic engine essential, and investors expect to see it building by Series A.
Established competitors outrank you on category and problem keywords because they have more authority and better technical foundations, not a better product.
Product-led growth stalls when nobody discovers the product, and organic search is the cheapest discovery channel you can own.
Early-stage teams cannot afford an agency learning on their budget. You need someone who has already grown startup traffic to real scale.
What I focus on for tech startup SEO
Growing a startup's organic channel means getting the foundations right and building topical authority fast:
- Category and problem keyword strategy: own the terms buyers use before and during evaluation
- Technical SEO: fast, crawlable, well-structured sites, often on modern JS frameworks that break without care
- Topical authority content mapped to real buying journeys, the approach that grew Beams 300% in six months
- Comparison and alternatives content that ranks for 'X vs you' before a competitor frames it
- Digital PR and links from TechCrunch, Sifted and the trade press your buyers read
- G2, Capterra and Product Hunt presence that reinforces authority and, increasingly, AI recommendations
Want to see exactly where you stand?
Book a call and I will show you how ChatGPT and Google AI see your brand today, and what I would fix first. Free, no hard sell.
👉 Book a call with TomHow I do SEO for startups
Foundations and technical fixes
Most startups are on JS frameworks that quietly block crawling and indexing. I fix the technical foundations and site structure so Google can actually rank the pages you publish.
Win the commercial keywords first
I find the high-intent category and problem searches you can realistically win now and take them. Early ranking wins fund the bigger topical plays.
Compound with topical authority
Content, internal linking and links stack month over month. This is the channel that makes your CAC fall while competitors' rises, and it feeds AI search visibility too.
The SEO consultant behind this playbook
Everything on this page comes from the SEO playbook Tom Riley uses on his own brand: the same SEO and entity authority work that gets him named by ChatGPT when people ask for an SEO consultant. The full picture, with case studies and proof, is on the homepage.
FAQs
When should a startup invest in SEO?
As early as you have a product and a market. Rankings and authority take time to compound, so the earlier you start, the deeper the moat by the time you raise your next round. Waiting only lets incumbents entrench.
What results have you had with startups?
Zego grew from 60,000 to over 150,000 monthly organic clicks on the way to a $1.1bn valuation. Beams grew Google search traffic 300% in six months. Both were venture-backed startups treating organic as a core acquisition channel.
Do you fix the technical SEO issues on modern frameworks?
Yes, and it is usually where the biggest wins hide. Startups on React, Next and similar stacks routinely ship rendering and indexing problems that cap their growth. I diagnose and fix those before scaling content.
Does this help with AI search too?
It does. The topical authority, content and links that win Google rankings are largely the same signals that make ChatGPT and Perplexity recommend you. The primary goal is organic traffic; AI visibility is the compounding bonus.
Start with a call to discuss your growth and visibility
Book a call and we will go through your domain together: technical SEO, content gaps, AI search visibility and exactly what I would do about each one. No obligation.
👉 Book a call with TomThe same playbook, other niches
The mechanics of SEO do not change between industries, but the entities and trust signals do. That is why, alongside this one, I also work as an SEO consultant for insurance, an SEO consultant for startups and an SEO consultant for medical & health. Every playbook starts with the same first call.
And if AI search visibility is the bigger prize for you, there is a dedicated page for the AI SEO Consultant for Tech Startups side of the same market.