In “What Is Involved In SEO Maintenance?” you’ll traverse through the intricate world of Search Engine Optimisation. We ensure you grasp the importance of routine maintenance in the world of SEO, providing an illuminating perspective on tasks such as keyword monitoring and the technical upkeep of your site. Unveiling the secret to staying ahead of your competitors, you’ll come to realise the paramount part these behind-the-scenes efforts play in your digital success.
Understanding SEO Maintenance
Let’s cut straight to the chase. You, like anyone investing time and energy into SEO, want to understand exactly what you’ve signed up for. SEO maintenance is much more than just setting up a website and stuffing it with keywords. It’s a meticulous, ongoing process that involves regularly checking and optimising your site, ensuring it’s up to speed with search engine algorithms.
Defining SEO Maintenance
So, what is SEO Maintenance? Well, it’s the process of routinely optimising your website to meet current SEO standards and user expectations. This includes auditing your site, updating content, tracking keywords, analysing performance, and making necessary adjustments. Essentially, it’s about staying relevant and keeping your site healthy to continually attract organic traffic.
Importance of SEO Maintenance
Now, you might be asking, why is SEO maintenance essential? Picture this: you buy a brand new car. Would you expect it to run efficiently forever without any maintenance? Unlikely. The same principle applies to SEO. Regular maintenance helps keep your website performing optimally, cementing your visibility in search rankings, maintaining user engagement, and resulting in higher conversion rates.
The ongoing nature of SEO
SEO isn’t a one-time fix, it’s a constant commitment. Just like the world of digital marketing, SEO is always evolving; search engine algorithms change constantly, you encounter new competition, and user behavior shifts. To stay on top, your SEO strategies and practises must evolve as well. This continuous process of optimising and adjusting forms the essence of SEO maintenance.
Analysing Website Performance
With the basics out of the way, let’s delve into the aspects of SEO maintenance, starting with website performance analysis.
Checking website speed
Begin by evaluating your website speed as it significantly impacts user experience and contributes to SEO. A slow-loading site can drive visitors away, meaning lower conversions, increased bounce rates, and a serious blow to your SEO efforts. Therefore, ongoing site speed checks are integral to your SEO maintenance.
Identifying broken links
Finding and fixing broken links on your website is another crucial aspect of SEO maintenance. Broken links lead to nowhere and spoil the user experience, which search engines don’t take lightly. Regularly check for these pesky issues and fix them promptly.
Analysing user experience
User experience is king when it comes to SEO. Analyse factors like easy navigation, mobile compatibility, and intuitive design. Remember, happy users boost session lengths, reducing bounce rates and thus, elevating your standing in search engine rankings.
Keyword Monitoring
Next up, keyword monitoring – a significant part of SEO maintenance.
Tracking keyword rankings
SEO doesn’t stop at identifying and using relevant keywords. It’s crucial to keep track of how your chosen keywords are performing in the search rankings over time. Shifts in keyword popularity or changes in search engine algorithms may affect your rankings.
Updating keyword strategies
In tandem with tracking keyword performance, you need to frequently update your keyword strategies. This could involve adding new keywords, phasing out ineffective ones, or finding better ways to organically incorporate keywords into your content.
Exploring new keyword opportunities
New keywords continually emerge as trends, industry language, and user habits evolve. By constantly exploring new keyword opportunities, you ensure your SEO strategy remains dynamic and effective.
Content Evaluation and Updating
SEO maintenance also involves a thorough appraisal and updating of site content.
Assessing current content effectiveness
Ensure your content is relevant, engaging, and insightful. Regularly assess its effectiveness by checking metrics like page views, bounce rates, shares, comments, and conversions.
Updating outdated content
The web moves at a breakneck speed. So, part of your SEO maintenance should involve updating any outdated content on your website. This demonstrates to search engines that you’re providing users with the most recent and relevant information.
Creating new SEO-focused content
Finally, never stop creating fresh, SEO-focused content. Search engines reward sites that consistently publish useful, high-quality content by improving their rankings in search results.
Continuing On-Site Optimisation
On-site optimisation is the process of making your website search engine friendly. Among others, this task involves tasks like monitoring meta tags and descriptions, optimising website structure, and improving internal linking.
Monitoring Meta tags and descriptions
Your meta tags and descriptions tell search engines what your content is about. Updating them to include targeted keywords aids search engines in properly indexing your pages, which eventually helps in improving your search rankings.
Optimising website structure and design
A website’s structure and design impact its usability and search engine crawlability. Therefore, regularly optimising your website structure and design plays a crucial role in SEO maintenance.
Improving internal linking
Internal links guide visitors to other relevant pages on your site, encouraging them to stay longer. They also assist search engines in understanding your site structure, which can positively influence your site’s ranking.
Managing Backlinks
Backlinks, or links that point to your website from other sites, have significant bearing on your SEO performance.
Auditing existing backlinks
Regular backlink audits help you appreciate the quality of your backlinks and identify areas for improvement.
Removing harmful backlinks
Not all backlinks are beneficial. Links from poor-quality domains can negatively impact your SEO. Therefore, detecting and removing these harmful backlinks is essential in SEO maintenance.
Building high-quality backlinks
Keep striving to earn high-quality backlinks from reputable websites. This not only boosts your authority in search engines but also drives organic traffic to your site.
Competitor Analysis
SEO maintenance importantly involves keeping an eye on the competition.
Identifying competitors’ SEO strategies
Understanding what SEO strategies are working for your competitors can offer insights into what could work for you. This involves analysing their content, keywords, backlinks, and social media activity.
Keeping track of competitors’ keyword usage
Observing the keywords your competitors are targeting can help inspire and refine your own keyword strategy.
Learning from competitors’ SEO successes and failures
Your competitors can serve as valuable case studies. By studying their SEO successes and failures, you can glean insights to guide your SEO strategy and avoid potential pitfalls.
Mobile SEO Maintenance
The increasing predominance of mobile browsing has generated a new aspect of SEO maintenance — mobile SEO.
Ensuring mobile-friendliness
Your website must provide a top-notch mobile experience. A mobile-unfriendly site won’t just drive away potential traffic, but can also damage your search engine rankings.
Improving mobile site speed
Put simply, if your site doesn’t load quickly on mobile devices, you risk losing visitors. Therefore, continually work on improving your website’s mobile speed.
Optimising for mobile keyword searches
Remember, mobile users often search differently than desktop users. Therefore, optimising your site for mobile-specific keyword searches is pivotal in mobile SEO maintenance.
Local SEO Maintenance
If you’re a local business, you might already know the importance of local SEO. In essence, this boosts your visibility for locally relevant searches.
Updating Google My Business profile
A well-optimised Google My Business profile helps you rank well in local search results. Regularly updating information like your address, opening hours, and customer reviews is crucial.
Encouraging and managing reviews
Online reviews significantly influence local SEO. Encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews and be sure to respond to and manage these reviews effectively.
Optimising for local keywords
Incorporate region-specific keywords in your content to improve visibility in local search. This could mean using your city, county, or region name in combination with your target keywords.
Reporting and Strategy Adjustments
Finally, SEO maintenance includes monitoring your strategies and making necessary adjustments.
Creating and analysing SEO reports
Regularly creating and analysing SEO reports help you see the fruits of your labour and understand if your strategies are working.
Identifying areas for strategy adjustments
SEO reports can highlight areas where your strategies might need a tweak. Perhaps a particular set of keywords isn’t driving traffic, or a piece of content isn’t engaging your audience.
Implementing changes to SEO strategy
Based on these insights, adjust your SEO strategy. Remember, SEO is an ongoing process of trial and improvement. It requires adapting to new challenges, making changes where necessary, and never resting on your laurels.
Remember, SEO maintenance is not a sprint, but a marathon. While it involves constant effort and may seem overwhelming at times, the payoff in terms of improved search rankings and increased organic traffic makes it all worthwhile. So, keep tracking, improving, and evolving. Good luck with your SEO maintenance journey!
Hi, I’m Nicholas Bortoluzzi (but people often call me Nico).
I am the Founder and Director at SEO Lynx, an internet marketing agency operating in the UK and servicing clients worldwide.
The article on this page was written and curated by myself.