How To Keep Up With SEO Maintenance and Why It Matters

About 68% of online experiences start with a search engine, but only 0.63% of results on the second page get clicked. Search engine optimization ensures that your content reaches the front page of results. However, SEO isn’t something you can do one time and forget about it. Ongoing SEO maintenance is necessary to ensure you stay on the front page.

What Is SEO Maintenance?

Search engine optimization maintenance is the regular and ongoing process of increasing and maintaining your search engine rankings by improving your content’s SEO. This process involves multiple steps that require several hours per week:

1. Regularly review and analyze your content’s rankings.
2. Make changes based on the results of your analysis.
3. Build and tweak content to improve your search results.
4. Periodically review your content’s performance to ensure it is meeting your goals.
5. Identify and take advantage of emerging market opportunities.
6. Watch for early signs of decreasing traffic.

Because this process can be resource-intensive, many companies enlist the help of SEO professionals.

Why Is SEO Maintenance Important?

You can buy your way to the top of the search results; however, about 70-80% of users ignore paid listings. If you want to get noticed, you need to rank well in organic search results. Maintenance helps you achieve this goal in a variety of ways.

Avoid Sinking Search Engine Rankings

Even if your content is evergreen, your rankings will decrease without maintenance. Search engine algorithms consider the quality and freshness of content because users tend to prefer more recent content over something created months or years ago.

Additionally, search engines update their algorithms frequently. For example, Google updates its algorithm three or more times per year. As a result, what ranks well today may not rank well after the next update.

Enhanced User Experience

The goal of search engine algorithms is to assign the highest rankings to the content that best serves the user. The user experience plays a big role in determining which sites best meet the needs of users.

As a result, SEO maintenance tweaks, such as speeding up loading times and making site designs more mobile-friendly, enhance both SEO and the user experience. This is a win-win for you because your goal is not just to get people to your site but to incentivize them to take some action that is beneficial to you. The better the user experience is, the more likely you are to achieve this goal.

Competitive Advantage

You aren’t the only company trying to capture a coveted spot on the front page of search results. Without monthly SEO maintenance, you will have trouble staying ahead of the competition, particularly if the competition has an effective maintenance strategy.

More companies than ever before are utilizing SEO strategies and investing in maintenance to capture and keep those top spots. If you want to gain more exposure and customers, you need to be vigilant about maintaining your rankings.

Changing Market

The market is always shifting. Companies release new products every day; fads, trends, news stories, hashtags, memes, and social phenomena come and go rapidly. It is difficult to predict what will be the next big thing, and if you aren’t updating your content to take advantage of a changing market, you may miss out on opportunities.

How Do You Perform SEO Maintenance?

There isn’t any one thing you can do to make sure you keep your hard-fought rankings. Your maintenance plan must incorporate a variety of strategies.

Regularly Update and Optimize Content

Set a goal to freshen your long-term content every 12 to 18 months. Start a blog and post regularly to help keep your site continuously supplied with fresh new content.

Focus your content creation and updates on accuracy, keyword relevance, and alignment with search intent. You also need to update your content to ensure it continues to rank well after algorithm changes. For example, because search engines now place a higher value on images and videos than they once did, you should update older, text-only content with images and videos.

Monitor and Improve Website Performance

Utilize tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console to track how your sites are performing. Key SEO maintenance metrics to examine include loading times, mobile responsiveness, click-through rates, search engine rankings, page views, impressions, queries, time on page, and bounce rate.

Use these metrics to identify content that you need to tweak to improve performance and SEO. For example, a page that is slipping in search engine rankings or getting fewer views or clicks could need updating.

It is particularly important to pay attention to loading times. As more users gravitate to mobile devices for browsing, they become less patient with slow-loading sites. This can be a double whammy because search engines also penalize slow sites.

A load time of less than one second is ideal. However, even if you can’t achieve that, every second you can shave off your load time helps.

Analyze and Adjust Keyword Strategy

Whenever you are creating new content or refreshing existing content, identify the words and phrases the target audience for your content is searching for. You can use tools such as Google Search Console and KeywordTool.io to assist you with this process. Search terms can change over time, making it important to update older content to reflect current keyword usage.

Build Quality Backlinks

Search engines consider how many quality sites link to your content when ranking how reputable and relevant it is. Encouraging relevant and reputable websites to link to your content as part of your SEO maintenance strategy can improve your rankings.

However, if you build links too fast or the majority of your links point to just one article, search engines may penalize you. This makes it important to go through your older content and incorporate a white hat link-building strategy so that you have a balanced mix of backlinks that points to multiple pages on your site.

Add Outbound and Internal Links

It may seem counterintuitive to send users to someone else’s site. However, quality outbound links help search engines determine how reputable and relevant your site is to users within your niche. Choose external links that provide real value to the user. Focus on quality, rather than quantity.

Internal links help search engines understand how each page on your site fits into your overall topical focus. Internal links also encourage users to spend more time on your site. However, use them in moderation.

Fix Broken and Redirected Links

Links that don’t go anywhere or redirect multiple times frustrate users. Additionally, search engines will penalize you in the rankings for excessive redirects and broken links.

Check for broken links and redirects as one of your monthly SEO tasks. You can make this SEO maintenance task easier by using a tool such as Screaming Frog.

Watch for Algorithm Changes

When a major search engine changes its algorithm, it makes headlines in the SEO world. However, if you aren’t following the industry news, you may be unaware of it.

Not keeping up with algorithm changes can tank your rankings. Make sure you stay on top of the news and adapt your SEO strategies as necessary.

How Does BKA Content Help With SEO Maintenance?

If SEO maintenance sounds like a lot of work, it’s because it is. However, you don’t have to go it alone. BKA Content can supply you with fresh, SEO-optimized content for your websites and blogs, conduct a technical SEO audit, or provide white hat link building services so that you can focus on what you do best. Contact us today to get started.