Ongoing SEO – 7 Reasons Why Your New Site Needs It

So you have your new site; it’s glorious. You’ve slaved over the content, you’ve coughed up the cash and your developers burned the midnight oil. And now here’s some pillock giving you not one, not two but seven reasons why your site needs ongoing SEO.

It’s annoying, we know. If the developer is any good, the site will be in good shape: they will have helped you build a site with a coherent structure, encouraged you to write compelling copy and helped you build a good site. The kind of site that search engines like to rank.

But the map is not the territory and, more than ever, that territory does not sit still.

The Competition

If you’ve done this right and launched your site well, people will notice. Amongst the people who are most likely to notice are the competition. Those blighters are more than likely to ‘draw inspiration‘ from your efforts and ‘build on’ your best ideas and benefit from them (let’s face it, you probably did it when you were building your new website).

Ongoing SEO is not just about slavishly adding keywords and ‘hip’ content, it involves watching your competitors and reacting when they may be stealing a march.

As they evolve, you need to as well.

Staying Relevant

There is some debate as to whether or not adding new content to a website is likely to improve your SERP (Search Engine Results Page) ranking. But here’s what Google itself says on the matter:

“Yes, Google generally prefers new content, as it signals that a website is active and up-to-date, which can positively impact its search ranking; however, the key is to ensure that the new content is high quality and relevant, not just published frequently for the sake of freshness alone.”

So let’s put that to bed.

Get writing.

But pay attention to the latter half of that quote. Make sure you say something useful. In the end, Google only wants to show things that large numbers of people want to read.

But it’s your business, it shouldn’t be hard. Again, a good SEO strategy should help you identify potential customers and suggest new content to appeal to them.

Link Profile Management

Backlinks can really help your web page rank. If the US government were to add a link to your website from their homepage to yours, Google, with some justification, would regard that as an important indicator of your website’s importance. The following will happen:

• Your domain authority would go through the roof
• Your site would climb to the top of just about any SERP you care to mention
• Your site traffic would balloon
• If your hosting ain’t great, your site will crash – make sure you have good hosting

Of course, not every backlink is one you want. Link farms create vast lists of value-less links which can erode your domain authority, linking sites may become old or redundant and the link is no longer considered beneficial or the site owner may, quite simply be one with which you do not to be associated.

A good SEO team ought to be able to look for both backlink opportunities and toxic backlinks. It’s quite a technical task but you can ‘disavow’ backlinks and Google should ignore those links when considering how influential your site it.

Search Engine Algorithm Updates

Search engines like Google frequently update their algorithms to improve the quality and relevance of search results.

An SEO strategy that works today might become less effective or even penalised by a future update. It shouldn’t, no SEO strategy should in any way attempt to ‘game’ the system. But it can and does happen – SEO experts will know when a major update is coming and, if needed, take remedial action, if needed, before your rankings fall through the floor.

Technical SEO

Users become ever more demanding and attention spans only get shorter. Expectations of user interface change all the time.

On top of that, the resources on which the site relies change all the time. Javascript libraries change and move, external links can and do break and the demands of site security evolve constantly.

Just to stand still, just to keep your site working as well as it does now, you need a programme of ongoing SEO and maintenance.

Technical, ongoing SEO is something over which you have complete control. There’s no real excuse for not being on top of it.

Local and Global Market Changes

Search trends change, shopping patterns change, markets change: in the years since the pandemic, catering has altered beyond all recognition. Your industry is unlikely to have been untouched.

And the rate of change has only accelerated. A business model which worked two years ago is unlikely to work well forever.

Your website is very likely to be your most important marketing effort. It makes sense to keep working with someone who really understands the changing environment in which it is expected to function.

Measuring and Adapting to Performance Data

SEO is not a one-and-done process; it’s data-driven. Continuous monitoring of your website’s performance through analytics and search console data allows you to understand what’s working and what isn’t. This data can then inform adjustments and improvements to your strategy, assisting long-term success.

My Site Isn’t New, Would Ongoing SEO Help?

I have a leaking gutter. I’ve ignored it for the winter and now I have to deal with some internal decorative work to do. If I ignore it for much longer, I’ll have some real plasterwork to do.

The best time to fix things is now. Prevention is better than a cure. Name your cliché – they are clichés for a reason.

It needn’t cost the earth. We can even set you up with software that will help you do much of it yourself. But do nothing, and the date at which you need to take your website, throw it away and start again only gets closer.

You should give us a call.