So why do you need ongoing SEO? As a business owner in an ideal world Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is quick and easy one-off thing. You go and create your business website, optimise the content to target keywords, and then promote it. Then you wait for the website to rack up a number of inbound links. At the same time,you start ranking for your target keywords, increase traffic and ultimately make more sales.
Unfortunately, that is not the case. The reality of SEO is not just about adding tons of keywords, creating backlinks and then checking it off your list. The landscape of SEO is ever changing. You need ongoing SEO strategies to adopt these changes quickly, if you want your website to remain visible on Google’s search. Here are the top 5 reasons why you must pursue long-term SEO:
Google’s algorithm is dynamic.
Your initial SEO campaigns are based on the current algorithm update from Google at the time of website creation. If you want to rank well in search results, following the criteria of Google’s algorithm is important. This is because Google’s crawlers read, index and rank web pages according to these algorithms.
However, you have to keep in mind that Google’s algorithm is not static. In fact, it is frequently tweaked, updated and revised. This is to ensure that only high quality and more relevant content is shown in search queries.
For instance, an algorithm update called “Mobilegeddon” was rolled out in April 2015. With this, websites’ mobile friendliness became an important factor in how well web pages rank on search results. The update forced website owners to optimise their web pages for mobile, or they risked losing ground in their rankings.
There were also small changes like when Google enabled its crawlers to read Flash elements in web pages. This is an update that allowed websites with optimised Flash elements to gain advantage in the search rankings.
It is very important that you keep on updating and optimising your website according to these algorithm updates. Ignoring them will have a significant negative impact, not only on your rankings but also on your website’s overall performance.
SEO strategies are always evolving.
As the SEO landscape is ever changing, the strategies involved in optimisation are also constantly changing. Since the growth of social media and the influence it has on potential customers, SEO specialists have to take it into consideration when formulating strategies.
When it comes to keywords, single terms have now given way to longer and more specific long-tail keywords. This is now the most viable option for ranking or driving conversions.
With a lot of competition coming in everyday, it is a must for you to employ ongoing SEO efforts so you don’t find yourself stuck in strategies that are obsolete and no longer effective. After all, you don’t want to spend your time and your marketing budget in efforts that no longer produce the results that you need.
The SEO and the competitive landscape are not the only things evolving. Your customers and their preferences are also changing. This requires you to tailor your strategies accordingly, in order to keep your brand and products in front of them.
Most of the searches on Google are entirely different and new each day. Therefore, it is important to keep track of how users come to your website, and what keywords they used to get there. This will give you insight of what they are trying to find, and you are able to adjust your SEO strategy for better brand engagement.
Effective and successful SEO strategies need time.
We cannot stress this enough, but SEO is a long-term process. No matter how good your efforts are, you cannot expect your rankings and conversions to improve right away. By nature SEO is driven by quality content, an organic growth in number of links, and building brand – all of them take time and effort.
The process of link building, for example, is not something that you can accomplish in a matter of days, or even weeks. Building reliable and legitimate links for your website will take effort and it should be an ongoing process. You might get tempted by some black or grey hat tactics for building a huge number of links in a short time. However, you should know that Google penalises websites that implement these kinds of strategies.
The only way for you to establish your website is to implement an effective long-term SEO campaign. You need to develop strategies that will get you organic links – a rich set of keywords, quality content and brand awareness. It takes time to accomplish all of these, but the amount of traffic and conversions you will get will be worth it.
Fresh content is a must.
Google’s Panda algorithm update was rolled out in February 2011 and aimed to penalise websites with “thin content” or “low quality sites”. As a result, quality and engaging content became the standard. Also, fresh content became a staple of every SEO strategy. Because content is crawled and indexed more often by Google, having relevant and great content will establish you as an expert in your field. This in turn, will help build trust with your customers and enable you to develop your brand.
The secret in taking advantage of content marketing is to keep your website updated. Even if your website or blog has few great articles, it will not be enough to only update it once in awhile. Bounce rates can increase when visitors see outdated information on a website. Hence, regular content creation is a necessary part of any ongoing SEO strategy.
There are many different SEO strategies to implement.
One of the reasons why most businesses hire the services of an SEO company is because there are so many strategies that need to be implemented. An agency can sort these strategies for you, and help you decide which ones you’d like to prioritise. Just make sure that they understand that you want the most reliable, relevant and effective strategy for your company.
Whilst implementing SEO strategies will initially benefit the website, if SEO is not ongoing the rankings will start to decrease as an algorithm change is made, or a competitor ups the ante. If you are unable to react your website ranking will suffer. It makes sense to engage in ongoing SEO. This way, you can implement your strategies by batches and monitor each result efficiently.
References:
http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/12/top-5-reasons-for-ongoing-seo/
http://www.wiliam.com.au/wiliam-blog/5-reasons-that-ongoing-seo-work-is-important
