Many people who are new to SEO and online marketing ask me why they should keep investing into SEO? They are under the impression that SEO is an one-time deal and that once your website is SEOd, top rankings will appear and stay forever.
Unfortunately this is a myth that is as far from the truth as possible. Thinking like this can be outright dangerous, since it gives you the false hope that a basic website optimization can catapult you to the top of Google forever. Often this is also the fault of unethical SEO companies that promise a lot to make a quick buck. So I am writing this post to clarify once and for all why an ongoing SEO program is important.
1. Link Velocity
The main tactic for building your rankings apart from the changes you can make on your site is a targeted link building campaign. Google is not only looking at how many links are pointing to your site, but also at the quality of the link, the relevance and the consistency of your link building efforts. If you all over sudden stop your link building efforts it might not take long until your site looses rankings. If Google sees no more new links coming into your site they assume you are loosing popularity, so I recommend that you talk to your SEO consultant to find out what kind of monthly link building campaign is necessary to sustain and/or increase your rankings for your business.
2. Keep your site fresh
Google just announced that they now pay more attention to regular updates on websites. Fresh content on your websites can therefore make an important difference for your rankings. A blog, a forum or a news page are a couple of ways to add regular updates and new content to your site. To make these updates most efficient it is important to optimize each new piece of content so it supports the existing site SEO and helps to build additional rankings for long tail keyword phrases. By adding new optimized content on a regular basis you will see more and more visitors coming to your website from long tail keyword terms (and many visitors who use long tail terms have a higher buying intent as well).
3. The competition doesn’t sleep
If you do a good job for your on-site SEO you might get some good rankings based on that. However never underestimate your competitors. Once they see you climbing up in the search engines, they will wonder what’ s going on and might hire a SEO consultant as well. If you rely on your initial onsite SEO only to stay on top of the search engines you make it very easy for your competitors to outrank you if they decide to build their own rankings with a monthly SEO program.
This way your rankings can drop fast and you will also lose the advantage you had through your initial SEO. If you are not too concerned about your competitors, I would recommend to still work with a SEO company to monitor your rankings and your competitors on a monthly basis. SEO companies usually offer monitoring options for a very reasonable price. This way you will be alerted once your competitors make changes to their site and you can increase your SEO efforts early enough to defend your rankings.
4. Google is Changing (a lot)
Another important reason why a monthly SEO program is a good idea, is the nature of Google and other search engines. Google as the most popular search engines is changing it’s ranking algorithm on a regular basis. Many tactics that were popular for SEO a couple of years ago won’t help you at all today or even worse could get you banned from the search engines. It is therefore important to keep up to date with the latest changes and a good SEO consultant will be able to advice you how to adjust your SEO strategy to the latest search engine updates and keep your rankings high.
5. Testing and Adjustments
Even with the best preparation and keyword research you won’t find out which keyword phrases convert best for your website and your visitors until you have collected some data based on your SEO efforts. Sometimes you will find that certain keyword phrases convert much better than other ones and that you SEO needs some adjustment based on your findings. A good SEO company will help you analyze your traffic, find the keyword phrases that work best for you and modify your SEO strategy based on these findings. This process takes time, so an ongoing SEO campaign is very important to ensure you don’t lose any time and valuable traffic here.
There you have it…
Sometimes you get lucky and reach a top spot in Google after a basic website optimization. Don’t get fooled into believing that these rankings will stay forever. However if a SEO consultant can get you ranked high based on the initial SEO setup make sure to hold on to him and ask waht it would take to stay on top. Good, ethical SEO companies are hard to find, so you might have gotten your self a keeper here! 
If you are looking for a SEO consultant and want to find out more about our monthly SEO programs contact us here.
