Search Engine Optimization

There are free tools to save time and money while promoting your small business online. Administering your Search Engine Optimization (S E O) has very few but you can do some of it yourself for free. The big challenge most business owners have is the time required to effectively administer their SEO form and content.

One of the most frequent questions I get is: What happens when you start an SEO campaign? The answer depends on the campaign, the keywords, the marketing competition, your goals and location in the rankings. But few people seem to be concerned about the other side of the question. What happens when you stop an SEO Campaign?

It takes some time to gradually get SEO up to speed where all optimizations are helping your website grow in the rankings. What I am talking about is months, not days. If you decide to stop an SEO campaign, your website will not immediately fall out of ranking. As other websites go after the same keywords you currently rank for and eventually overtake your site in the rankings your site will lose because they’re actively working to optimize.

With SEO, you want that top spot in the rankings, in the maps, in the knowledge cards. You want to claim the top, and good SEO is how you force the competition out. They go down in the rankings if you are able to run a better campaign, better optimize for keywords, get more links, and have a more user-friendly website. You will not push them off the web but it will give you an edge on traffic and hopefully more customers and resulting revenue. In the end, if you stop your campaign and your competition starts going after your same keywords, you will start to drop and they start to rise.

It may take six months or more to get ranking and it will also take some time to de-accelerate and drop down the page. That can be good if you need to take a break from SEO. You won’t crash immediately but it’s hard to get it rolling again.

In an SEO campaign, you have both targeted and umbrella keywords that rise as a result of the work you’re putting into your site. The targeted keywords are the ones you’re going after on purpose through your content. The umbrella keywords are the ones that you find in searches for sites like yours. Each rise as a result of your hard work. When you stop SEO, or essentially stop optimizing and updating your website, you slowly start to lose some of those umbrella keywords at first and after that the main targeted keywords start to drop. This happens because others are targeting them. Other websites will rise in the rankings and you will slowly start dropping as they overtake your site.

When you aren’t building new pages, you are losing the chance for new backlinks. Whether it be new product pages, new blogs, or other pages for your site, when you stop SEO, you probably are not creating any new pages or altering existing pages. Without new pages and posts you can share through social media; you’re not curating new traffic through well-optimized pages that people find organically. New pages and new content send signals to Google that your site is updated and relevant. Plus, having no new pages also doesn’t give anyone a chance to link back to your site for that new content.

Why should you always maintain SEO Efforts? Because Googles algorithm changes frequently, yes, every day. With thousands of updates each year, that obviously means multiple times per day. Over time, these updates make a big difference in your website rankings. Another reason is your competition. Every website is looking to be in that number one spot because research shows that is where most searchers go first. This is a good reason to start and maintain a good SEO program. A site that hasn’t seen new content in months won’t impress your visitors much and they’ll take their business elsewhere. People want to know if your business can help them before they ever pick up the phone and call.

If you have questions or comments we would love to hear them so send a note and let us know your thoughts.