Just like practice makes perfect on a playing field, ongoing work makes for better SEO performance. While there are quick wins to be had, overall SEO success is a marathon, not a sprint. You’ve got to stay on your toes to not only stay ahead of the competition, but also adjust to the evolving rules of the game. This requires specific ongoing, technical SEO work. Here’s what the foundation of schedule for maintaining and improving SEO performance looks like.
Keyword research and rankings
Changes in user search queries affect how a page/site appears in results on an hourly basis, so regular monitoring must be done to find shifts in consumer search behavior, hot topics and emerging SERP content types. In other words, tracking rankings and search term volume can guide supports ongoing web and content efforts.
- Timing: monthly or quarterly depending on budget; after major algorithm updates
Competitor insights
SEO is a competition. That’s why we keep a close eye on competitor ranking factors. Not only can you react to what they are doing well, but we can plan to fill gaps where they aren’t performing in order to rise in the rankings and increase traffic.
- Timing: quarterly; after algorithm updates
Algorithm checks
Search engines aren’t always the most transparent about how their search algorithms change, but they do change – and regularly. Each year, Google updates its ranking algorithm 500-600 times to provide more relevant search results. To keep pace with algorithm and consumer trends, onsite and offsite SEO are important practices to the success of any website and should be monitored and continually adjusted to get the most out of SEO efforts. Our SEO specialist will do a before-and-after analysis of sites to understand how they are impacted; the sooner you can catch and address any loss in traffic the sooner you can recover. Plus, search engines reward active improvement. For more context, this also involves some investigation of how changes impact clients’ direct competitors
- Timing: monthly and when confirmed or unconfirmed algorithm updates are announced
Technical audits
Implementing small changes over time can have a huge impact in the long run. Similar to crawlability checks, we run technical crawls to address issues related to on-page SEO such as titles, meta descriptions, heading structure and duplicate content – just to name a few.
- Timing: monthly
Crawlability checks
If a page can’t be found by a search engine, it won’t rank. This process essentially ensures that as content is added to a site or ages it is easily assessed by crawlers and indexed. The site code is scanned for errors like broken links, 4xx/5xx errors, bad redirects, site speed and other technical errors which could prohibit a page from being indexed. If issues are found, a programmer will fix them.
- Timing: monthly
Ready to hit the field?
Chances are, you already have some sort of basic SEO strategy in place as a part of your overall marketing efforts. But there are always ways and practices you can use to up your game. As the great Michael Jordan once said, “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.”
To make more smart SEO plays, learn about SEO rules and some of the proven strategies for winning the SEO game.
