Having the best SEO maintenance practices are just as important as implementing a strong SEO strategy. SEO or search engine optimization is a marketing strategy that helps a website rank higher on Google’s search results. To put it differently, to manage a website’s ranking, you must take care of it. SEO maintenance is the continuing process of making changes to your current SEO strategy. In other words, SEO is the initial appointment and SEO maintenance is the upkeep. If you’re new to SEO or haven’t created an SEO maintenance plan, you’ve come to the right place. This article will discuss the importance of SEO maintenance and include SEO maintenance practices to add to your daily task checklist.
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What Is SEO?
For those who are new to SEO or need a refresher, SEO is a fundamental component of digital marketing. In other words, if you don’t use SEO basics you should start as soon as possible. A great SEO strategy can make a difference in your business’ success. Furthermore, SEO can be used for businesses that operate online or in person. To take advantage of SEO, all you need is an online presence. Your online presence can range from a Facebook page to a website. In today’s technological age, everything can be done on the internet. In fact, the internet is the most popular medium to find and spread information. To enumerate, if you want your cookie shop to be the best in town, you need to let the internet know about it.
How to Use SEO
Not only can you use SEO for almost anything, but there’s more than one way to implement an SEO strategy. We recommend that you consult a professional to create an SEO strategy that works the best for your business and its needs. Not all SEO is good SEO and not all good SEO is appropriate for your business. In fact, some SEO strategies can be harmful to your website’s search rankings. SEO Design Chicago offers digital marketing services such as SEO analysis, local SEO, and on-page SEO among other services.
I Have SEO, Now What?
SEO isn’t a one-and-done process. The internet is constantly changing and new competitors enter the market every day. In other words, SEO is never finished. SEO can make your website successful, but SEO maintenance will keep it successful. Without SEO maintenance, your outdated SEO strategies can actually hurt your website’s ranking.Without adopting a competitive edge, you can fall behind your competitors. For your website to reach the top of the results and stay there, you must constantly evolve. One of the top SEO best practices is regular SEO maintenance.
EO Maintenance
You should see SEO maintenance as a daily routine. You should do it for as long as you own a website and wish to use SEO. Equally important, SEO maintenance can look and operate differently depending on the platform and the business. For instance, monthly maintenance for a website will look different for a Facebook page. Furthermore, your routine should be flexible and your daily SEO checklist should be followed faithfully. As stated above, a great SEO strategy should be created on a case-by-case basis. However, there are SEO maintenance practices that everyone should abide by when applicable.
Website Performance
You can monitor your website’s performance through web analytics. Google offers a free web analytics service called Google Analytics. However, it should be noted that any accredited analytics service or software is efficient to measure website performance. It’s important to measure and manage your website performance to see how your SEO is performing. For example, if your unique visitor numbers are low, your current SEO strategy might be outdated or no longer be beneficial for you. In other words, web analytics can tell you when and where you need to reevaluate your SEO strategy. Furthermore, it can tell you when your SEO is working.
Frequency: You should evaluate your website’s performance every week.
What to Look for: Different web analytics software and services have different benefits. Be that as it may, audience tracking metrics such as page views, conversion rate, bounce rate, etc. are universal. Moreover, any metrics that measure how well your website is doing is worth observing.
Local Listings
A local listing tends to rank higher in specific situations. When a user types “near me” businesses that are closer to their location are prioritized, even if they have a lower SEO. As you can imagine, this is important for businesses that operate locally and may have a lot of competition. The information on your local listing must be up to date. This is a general rule for all businesses, but it’s especially crucial for local listings. If your local listing is not updated, you can lose customers, sales, and credibility. As result, you can receive negative reviews. This will worsen your SEO in a general search.
Frequency: Whenever your operation hours change or you use a different phone number, you need to update your local listings information. It should be done as needed or monthly.
What to Look for: View your local listing to make sure all your information is current, accurate, and necessary. You don’t want to have too much or too little information. If you sell a service, it’ll be a great idea to post your prices to your local listing. In addition, you should prioritize that the information you post is free of any errors or typos.
Link Building
Taking advantage of links is a great SEO strategy. However, it must be purposeful. Updating and removing broken links are just as important. Broken links or a 404 error page can damage your credibility. Furthermore, you lose a conversion and a site view. 301 error pages, or redirected links, can cause a similar problem. If your website uses links regularly, there are services and software available to help you detect and fix these link issues efficiently. If these issues persist, your website will have a lower search ranking which is bad SEO.
Frequency: You should clean your website of broken or redirected links monthly.
What to Look For: If you don’t have software to do it for you, remove and update any links that have a 303 or 404 error message.
Optimize Your Content
Just like your SEO is never complete, neither is your content creation. One of the keys to ranking high is to continually create new content and even update old content. That’s right: it’s important to revisit and update your older blog posts. A big part of SEO is being competitive. You need to prove to your competitors and Google that your products or services are the best on the internet. Moreover, outdated content can alienate your audience. Chiefly, edits to previous content show your audience that you care about them and your content.
You might be asking yourself, “But I don’t have anything to update!” This isn’t a bad thing. If you own a cooking blog, a recipe for a chocolate cake wouldn’t change. However, because it’s not broken doesn’t mean you can’t fix it. For instance, let’s say we own cooking blog A and our competitor is cooking blog B. Cooking blog B’s recipes mention new, innovative bakeware that yours does not. Furthermore, for their chocolate cake recipe, they include gluten-free alternative ingredients and yours does not. A user might trust cooking blog B’s website more than yours because it keeps up with trends. To enumerate, your recipes aren’t bad but they don’t appeal to your audience.
Additionally, you should revisit your old keywords to optimize your content. If your targeted keywords are old and irrelevant, it’ll give your website bad SEO.
If you want to get fresh eyes on old content, you can post it again on social media.
Frequency: You should revisit your old content every month. In addition, you should conduct personal research and update information as needed.
What to Look for: Update keywords and outdated information. Furthermore, assess if your old content is still relevant in today’s market.
Reevaluate UX
A smooth and direct UX or user experience is an important piece to achieving better conversion rates. If a user can’t access your site or can’t find information on your site, they’ll leave. This will result in a higher bounce rate that’ll affect your SEO. Several internal issues can lead to poor UX such as broken links and a complex web design. Your web design should be straightforward. Even if you think you have the best web design right now, there’s always room for improvement. All great things are edited and the same thing could be said about your web design.
Frequency: You should scroll through your website at least every month to find any web design errors. Additionally, you can reassess your current web design and find areas that could benefit from improvements.
What to Look for: Slow load times, broken pages, and overly complicated web design should be removed or edited.
Competitor Tracking
To lead the competition you have to understand the competition. In addition to ensuring that your website is running its best, you should see what your competitors are and are not doing. This could make the difference between being fifth on Google’s search results and first. Furthermore, this can help you brainstorm new SEO strategies to set your website apart from the rest.
SEO Maintenance Services from SEO Design Chicago
Want to know more about SEO best maintenance practices or want a free consultation? Visit us at seodesignchicago.com and talk to one of our consultants today!
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