Timing Your SEO Refresh
When we first start working with a company for their digital marketing strategy, we like to start with SEO. This creates a great foundation for the digital marketing as a whole, and gives us a chance to build on progress. Well, what happens when we work with a business for several years? We have long term clients who have been with us for 10+ years. For them, we have refreshed their SEO more than once.
So, how do we know when it is time to refresh the SEO? Here are some thoughts that will help you gain clarity:
A Lot of Time Has Passed
If you haven’t touched your SEO in five years or more, you are way overdue for a refresh. A lot can happen with the passage of years, and five years or more is a lot of time. During this time, strategies can change, the way people search online could have changed, and the industry itself could have changed. You should make it your policy to look at your SEO and make some changes, even if you don’t think you need them.
Chances are pretty good that you need them and you should delay any longer. Simply too much time has gone by. If it has been this long, you should actually start from scratch and treat your SEO as if it’s for the first time. This is because you will want to make sure everything is current, and it is much more effective to have fresh eyes when assessing it.
Your Industry Has Changed
Has your industry gone through a substantial and noticeable shift? If this is the case, it doesn’t matter how long ago you did your SEO. The work you did a year or two ago will likely be obsolete with your industry’s changes. Industry changes could make your audience’s search habits made, make portions of your product or service obsolete, and impact the keywords you initially optimized for.
When you see that your industry has gone through some major changes, you should, at first, wait to see if these changes are long term or just fads. If they are fads, you shouldn’t be rash about making changes, or you would do more harm than good.
Be Conservative When Making Changes
That being said, after you do your refresh, you need to make sure you do it with a conservative mentality. This is especially true if your organic results are actually good. You should refresh your SEO in a thoughtful way if this is the case. Absolutely refresh your strategy, assess the technical elements, research keywords, etc. However, instead of acting like it is a “start from scratch” you should use the new research to build in what is already working.
You don’t want to make too many changes because it could derail your progress. You want to build on what you already have and not mess with your success. At the same time, if your results have plateaued, you can also use this as an opportunity to break past it.
Categorized in: SEO
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