Let’s say your business has invested in SEO marketing by hiring a professional SEO (search engine optimization) agency and assigning certain strategies to be done in-house. The goal when you begin these services is to make it to the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) for the products or services that you offer. After a couple of months working with an SEO agency and consistently carrying out your in-house strategies, your website ends up listed at the top of the SERPs for your targeted keywords. After achieving this rise in the rankings, it is natural to wonder, “Can I stop my SEO services and keep my place in the rankings?”
Many may assume that once they have reached the top of the search engine rankings, the work is done, and their website will remain near the top for their main keywords. However, the internet is much too competitive of a marketplace for this to be true. Effective SEO marketing involves several strategies all working at once to not only achieve good rankings, but ultimately increase conversion rates by driving more traffic to your website from your target audience. Once the processes at work are stopped, your website will slowly begin to fall in the rankings as your competitors with active SEO campaigns take your place. It takes continuous SEO maintenance to remain at the top of the competition, SEO is not a one-time shot.
The following are important reasons why you should continue working with a digital marketing agency even after achieving good rankings. If you are interested in working with a professional that provides SEO services, talk to our digital marketing professionals at Proceed Innovative.
Stay Above the Competition
Anyone with an internet connection can advertise their business online which means that competition for search engine rankings is fierce. It has been continually proven that websites that appear near the top of the first SERP get a much higher click though rate (CTR). Depending on your business, you could be competing with hundreds or even thousands of other websites trying to rank well for the same keywords. If you reach the top of the rankings and stop using the strategies that got you there, your competitors will quickly take the top rankings and push your website further and further down.
Keep Up with Changing Algorithms
Google is the most used search engine in the world and eventually some people may find ways to exploit its algorithm to get high rankings. For this reason, Google regularly updates its algorithm to change the way it crawls and ranks websites. It is very important to keep up with Google algorithm changes because a certain SEO strategy that once was effective may become ineffective after an update or even worse, be eligible for penalization by Google.
You must adjust your SEO marketing strategies with each Google algorithm update, or your rankings could be hurt by the new algorithm. The professionals at an SEO agency are always informed on the latest Google updates and can help you adjust your SEO marketing for better results.
Don’t Miss Opportunities
The great thing about staying active with your SEO efforts is that you will always find opportunities to improve your rankings and increase your traffic and leads. If you dial back your SEO efforts, you are likely to miss out on the following opportunities that can help your website:
- Additional rankings: Every time you add a new page to your website, you are creating another opportunity for your website to rank. Getting more pages of your site to rank for different keywords will increase your traffic and leads.
- Earning links: Getting links to your website on other websites helps boost your rankings because this shows Google that others trust your website enough to build a link to it. If you do not continue to update your website with new content, you will miss out on opportunities to get new links.
- Returning visitors: Getting traffic to your website is great and it is even better if you get your visitors to return. However, people who visit your website will have little reason to return if you never update it with new content.
- SEO-friendly website updates: Your website will inevitably need to be updated at some point to improve its functionality or to add a new page. When making these updates, always do this with SEO in mind so the changes you make can help with the rankings.
Produce Fresh Content
There is a saying in the SEO industry that “Content Is King” as it takes fresh, useful, and engaging content to keep your audience or customer base coming back to your website. People consume content online at an incredible rate, especially on mobile devices, and if you stop offering fresh content, you will lose appeal among your audience as your old content becomes stale or irrelevant. Google is also more generous to websites that consistently offer new content.
Content creation should be at the center of your SEO marketing strategy. An SEO agency can provide content creation services if your company does not have the time or the resources to do it in-house.
SEO Marketing Requires Maintenance
According to an SEO ranking study done by Search Engine Roundtable in 2012, ceasing all SEO marketing activity after reaching the top of the rankings can result in as much as a 30 percent drop in rankings. This same study also showed that companies who continue their SEO marketing after getting good rankings experience an increase of up to 18 percent in their rankings.
This still rings true today as halting SEO activities will lead to a drop in links from other websites which may cause Google to determine that your website is no longer lively or relevant. When this happens, Google will begin to favor other websites over yours which will take over the top rankings and push your website down.
Don’t Ignore Risks
There are always potential issues that can occur with your SEO campaign that can put your rankings and traffic at risk of slipping. If these risks are ignored, a decrease in traffic can lead to less leads and sales.
The following are possible SEO risks you cannot ignore:
- Technical SEO issues: Issues like broken links and errors negatively affect the user experience of your website and should be fixed right away.
- Harmful links: Link building is beneficial when trusted websites link to your site, but it can be detrimental to have too many spam or low quality backlinks because Google may assume your website is also low quality or spammy. Make sure to check your backlink profile regularly and disavow bad links.
Keep Up with Changes within your Business
Companies often go through regular changes whether they are changes within their industry or internal changes such as new ways to conduct business, new products or services, or rebranding. Whenever you make a significant change to your business, you must reflect the change in your SEO marketing campaign. Rebranding and new products or services are excellent sources of new content that will keep your current audience engaged while also attracting new potential customers.
Keep Up with Changes in User Search Behavior
The trends in user behavior tend to change over time and if you do not change your SEO strategies to accommodate these changes, you will lose rankings and your internet traffic will go down. The increase in the use of mobile devices mentioned above is one major change in user behavior that directly affects the search rankings and traffic to your website. Another change in user behavior you should watch out for is keyword use. The keywords used to search for a particular product or service may change over time and if you are targeting keywords that are no longer used, you will not rank well for the new keywords. Continuous keyword research is an important aspect of SEO maintenance.
Keep Up with Changes in User Behavior on your Website
Users can get to your website through many avenues and they each use your website differently once they arrive. Web analytics data allows you to view the activity of your visitors on your website as well as how they got to your website and what set of keywords they used to get there. All of this information can help you improve your overall SEO marketing. Knowing what most visitors do on your website can help you improve what is working on your site as well as notice what is not working to create a better user experience. If you notice that most users reach your website through a social media outlet like Facebook, then improving what is already working on your Facebook profile can help attract even more traffic.
Website analytics can be difficult and time consuming to analyze for many companies but the information it provides is crucial for good SEO marketing. Agencies that offer SEO services can provide web analytics consulting and suggest or make adjustments in your SEO strategy based on the data.
Build Authority in Your Niche Over Time
One of the ultimate goals of SEO marketing is to establish your company as an industry authority in your particular niche. This requires consistent content creation that is relevant and timely for your target audience as it takes time to build your authority. If you stop your SEO marketing strategies and do not create fresh content for your particular audience, you will not be able to establish your company as an authority in your niche.
Protect Your Online Reputation
There are some things on the internet that you cannot control such as negative user comments and reviews which can hurt your online reputation if ignored. Your company’s online presence and rankings in combination with user reviews and comments about your business make up your online reputation. It is important to maintain a positive online reputation because most consumers read online reviews before making a decision and your online reputation will have a huge effect on the impression that users get of your business. Maintaining a good online reputation requires consistent activity to respond to comments and reviews, both positive and negative, or you may get overloaded with bad reviews which will hurt your online reputation and search engine rankings.
Ongoing SEO Services from Proceed Innovative
Just because you have reached your desired place in Google’s SERPs, this does not mean the job is done. Your SEO marketing strategy should be consistently implemented and adjusted to remain high in the SERPs which will help boost your conversion rate and ROI. Ceasing all SEO activity once you climb the rankings will cause your rankings and traffic to fall because you will have nothing new to offer your audience and no idea of how your targeted audience behaves on your website to improve their experience. An SEO agency has the expertise to not only improve your rankings in Google’s SERPs, but also implement a continuous SEO marketing plan to maintain good rankings.
If your company could benefit from the assistance of an SEO agency, contact Proceed Innovative, LLC. We provide a full range of SEO services and we work with each client individually to create a unique SEO marketing plan to help achieve and maintain good SEO rankings. For more information about our services, give us a call at (800) 933-2402.
