SEO isn’t a one-time activity. After we have achieved high ranks in specific keywords, we need to maintain our position continuously. Competitors are vying for our position and if we don’t move forward continuously, they’ll catch up and replace us. With a SEO maintenance plan, we will continue to have a high ranking. It means that we will attract more visitors and keep making more sales. Here are things we should include:
- Constant monitoring of search engine ranking: We should know that search engine ranking is dynamic and it is determined by specific ranking formula. The competition is always trying to get ahead of us. New websites are added each day and some of them are backed up by huge marketing and SEO budget. Therefore, it is important for us to continuously create monthly ranking reports to check our positions on different search engines based on a set of primary and secondary keywords.
- Traffic tracking: Getting a huge amount of traffic isn’t enough. We should also know where our traffic is coming from. This will allow us to adjust our marketing methods or even offer additional products that may appeal to our customers. If a big proportion of our traffic comes to specific page, it’s probably a good idea to find out why they go to these pages. It may mean that we should create additional content or offer related products based on these special preferences. That’s the reason why we should know where is the traffic coming from. We should also know what kind of content that people prefer in our website.
- Keyword research: Keyword research isn’t only performed before we build a website. We need to it continuously. It is possible that we need to add extra keywords or even remove old ones due to changes in our industry. As an example, Nokia and Blackberry are no longer primary keywords in smartphone niche, although they were once the most successful companies in the industry. We should also check traffic associated with each keyword, it doesn’t really make sense achieving high ranks for keywords that people no longer search for.
- Check the competition: People compete when they want to achieve significant ranking in search results. If we want to win a competition, we should know more about our competitors. As an example, we could identify competitors who are aiming for the same keywords. If there are too many competitions for specific keywords, it is probably better to gain higher ranks on some less popular keywords. It’s especially true if these keywords could become more important in the long run.
- Add more content: Our website can’t stay at top position if we stop adding more content. In fact, many websites add new content almost each day or even every hour. Fresh content can keep people coming back and recurrent visits from a large group of people are believed to be one of positive SEO factors.
