There are very few aspects of marketing that you can focus on once and be set for the life of your business. Your brand name and logo might fall under this category, unless you go through a rebrand. But most marketing tasks are ongoing. You need to keep revisiting them to ensure that they are representing your business in the best way possible and that they are keeping up with the changing market.
Search engine optimisation is certainly one of those things. You can’t just set your keywords and meta-data and then forget about them. Your SEO strategy needs regular tweaks and improvements. And here are some of the reasons why ongoing SEO is so important…
You have to keep up with Google
Google and other search engines have lots of rules and algorithms that decide how well webpages rank in their search results. These can be very difficult to keep up with, especially since they’re constantly changing and some of them aren’t known to us at all. It’s a good idea to keep up with SEO news so that you can update your SEO to meet any changes to these algorithms. Or have an expert on your side that stays up-to-date for you.
You have to keep up with the competition
Perhaps when you first launched your business, you were the only one providing that service in your area. But the market grows and evolves rapidly, with more and more people starting up their own businesses. Since you started out, you may have gained a lot more competition. Businesses that you need to compete with for search listings. This is likely to change which keywords you target and how your SEO strategy is managed.
You have to keep up with trends and behaviours
People aren’t searching for the exact same keywords they were five years ago, even within the same industry. So, you might have found a set of keywords that brought in a lot of leads initially, but this performance is unlikely to remain consistent. It’s important to monitor the success of your SEO strategy and evaluate where improvements can be made.
New content is good for SEO
Google likes websites that publish fresh, useful content. So, SEO is not just about the keywords on your homepage and the meta-data behind the scenes; it's also about blogs and other types of content that your audience will engage with. Maintaining a regular blog is one of the best things you can do for your SEO rankings, as long as your articles are interesting and engaging.
Your business might change direction
Businesses don’t always follow the same path throughout their lifetime. You might start offering a new product or service, or branch into a niche in your industry. Your website content and ongoing SEO need to reflect this, which means it’s time to revisit your SEO strategy.
Ongoing SEO might sound incredibly time-consuming, and it can be. Part of managing this effectively is knowing what you should and what you shouldn’t automate. Beyond this, you simply have to put the work in to keep everything up-to-date. Hiring professional marketing consultants like Vitty takes a lot of this work off your plate. Contact us to find out how we can help.