A robust search engine optimization (SEO) plan has the power to generate traffic and conversions to your website as you climb up in the search rankings. However, once you achieve your goals, you may begin to ask yourself if it’s worthwhile to continue optimizing your SEO program. You’ve already arrived at your destination, so why keep doing something that’s already done its job?
In truth, SEO is never “done.” By nature, search engine optimization has always been the “long-term” marketing strategy, solidifying your website’s search health over months and years of changes. While the consequences of stopping SEO may not be apparent right away, over time, running a website without attention to SEO can become detrimental to your organic search performance.
New Content Needs to Be Optimized
When discussing the importance of a long-term SEO plan, one of the first things to consider is how often you update your website. For some brands, new products and services are added to the website just about every week.
As new content is added, each of your product pages should have some sort of written content with a focused keyword strategy. When you’ve got a dedicated SEO team at your back, they can optimize new content as you add new pages to your site. This will give you a head start in search whenever you’re broadening your offerings.
Likewise, if your website offers regular blog updates or other types of informative content, you’re actually sitting on a huge SEO opportunity for your brand. Optimizing informative content through an SEO lens has the power to attract new customers that are eager to shop for your products or services.
Keywords Are Always Evolving
Another benefit of sustaining a long-term SEO plan is you’ll be able to keep up with the evolution of keywords in your field. Over time, your customers may start searching new terms to find information. Keyword data is constantly updated on Google, so your SEO team will be able to look at the data and tell you which terms are generating the most searches. Keep in mind that some search terms will fall out of favor with time as people change the way they search, reducing the value of a page optimized towards those older keywords.
Furthermore, SEO specialists will map keywords to specific pages, ultimately reducing the amount of keyword cannibalization. Optimizing content on a regular basis keeps your content abreast of the latest search trends. That fresh optimization also gives search engines another reason to index and evaluate your content’s ranking position.
Competitors Are NOT Stopping Their SEO
Before stopping your SEO, it’s important to keep in mind that your most fierce competitors will not be slowing their own SEO efforts. This means that your content will become stagnant while your competitors continually optimize their keyword strategies and deliver highly targeted content.
Over time, a frequently — and well-optimized website will surpass an inactive one in search rankings. Instead of hard stopping your SEO program, keep in mind that even a small amount of research and content optimization can go a long way. Businesses that don’t routinely improve the quality of their website will have nowhere to go but down in search engine rankings.
If you’re still thinking about ending your SEO efforts, you may want to reconsider. Search engine optimization is a marathon, not a sprint. Over time, keyword use evolves, and so do your competitors’ sites. Continual, data-driven optimizations to your site are important for the continued performance of your organic search channel.
