SEO for Founders Part 2: What Should a Founder Actually Do for SEO?

Even at the early stage you can do things that matter in SEO.

As a founder, your job isn’t to become an SEO expert.
But you should make sure your company becomes discoverable, credible, and quotable in the eyes of search engines. Whether it’s Google or AI or even Bing.

The question is:
Where should you spend your time? What will be effective?

Here’s what founder-led SEO can look like, and how it can help compound your marketing efforts and grow your business.

1. Write 3–5 Anchor Pieces Yourself

Don’t outsource this, at least not at first.

You need a few pieces, signed by you or published under your name, that:

• Show your understanding of the problem space
• Frame the market or shift you’re betting on
• Tie your product directly to the jobs-to-be-done your audience cares about

These are your “proof of mind” assets. They work for:

• Search (Google and AI both index and summarize these)
• Investors
• Early customers
• Talent

Here are some generic examples:

• “Why project management is broken for distributed hardware teams”
• “We built this because Notion + Airtable + 10 meetings wasn’t working”
• “How we cut delivery time by 37% for DTC brands using predictive batching”

Search for the keywords and intent you target. If you publish well you’ll show up.

2. Be the Signal, Not the Noise

You don’t need to publish 2x/week. You don’t need to chase traffic.

Instead, publish a few pieces that are:

• Useful (clear answers to real questions)
• Referencable (something others will cite or link to)
• Positioned (tied directly to your product or thesis)

This content gets surfaced not just by Google, but by AI assistants trying to “cite the smartest person in the room.”

That can be you if your content exists, is structured well, and lives on a real domain.

3. Define Your “Search Persona” Early

You have two brands to build:

• The startup brand: what the product solves
• Your personal brand: what you know and believe

You want both to show up when someone searches. What do you want to be known for when someone types “founder + [topic]” into Google or ChatGPT?

Then go build a content trail that creates that outcome:

• One well-written post on your site
• One guest post or interview
• One mention in a credible source
• One internal page clearly optimized for that topic

You don’t need to dominate the results, but being out there with your message will matter, and it will bring results back to your company.

4. Get Indexed Where AI Looks

AI search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others rely on trusted domains and cited sources.

That means:

• Contributing to reputable sites in your space
• Answering questions or publishing insights where your ideal customer hangs out
• Getting linked, quoted, or mentioned in places that machines and people trust

You’re not trying to game SEO. You’re trying to be findable by the tools people now use to make decisions. In local SEO this is more straightforward, but for companies targeting national and international clients what you are doing is developing brands – personal and company.

5. Treat Content Like Infrastructure

Every great startup ends up hiring SEO help. But now the founder’s fingerprints need to be on the first pieces.

Wen we’re writing as founders we’re trying to establish a voice and perspective. Our companies are not us, and nobody expects them to be, but there is also an integrity and alignment of ideas and values that demonstrate the roadmap of the company. The founder and the company aren’t the same thing, but they aren’t inseparable either.

The early content you write becomes:

• The voice that future marketing builds on
• The URL structure future SEO grows on
• The answers that AI scrapes and summarizes
• The signal that people associate with your brand

Get it in place early. You can systematize later.

🧠 TL;DR

You don’t need to deep dive SEO. You just need to:

• Write a few focused, strategic pieces yourself
• Get your site and story indexed by both humans and machines
• Create content worth linking to, referencing, or citing (“just”:)
• Be intentional about what you want to be known for

It’s not about traffic. It’s about trust and traction.
And SEO, including AI-powered search, still rewards the first ones there.