Anyone who has built and launched a website has likely encountered an oft-repeated acronym: SEO (search engine optimization). And while you might not have ever done SEO yourself, you've benefited from it in the past: Every day, search engines like Google employ complex algorithms to sift through more than 400 billion web pages and deliver the most relevant results.
Website owners like you use SEO techniques and strategies to get their websites to the top of the search results for relevant user queries. But SEO is not a one-time endeavor — Google and other search engines change often, and ongoing SEO ensures your website stays in front of the people you want to reach. Just as a physical storefront requires regular maintenance and updates to stay competitive, your website needs ongoing SEO to remain visible amidst the ever-changing digital landscape.
The ABCs of SEO: What is Ongoing SEO and Why Does It Matter?
Don't let the techy jargon intimidate you. HubSpot — considered one of the gold standards for SEO and digital marketing advice — defines SEO as simply a collection of strategies and tips that "expand a company’s visibility in organic search results'' and help "drive more visitors to the company’s website, increasing their chances for more conversions which leads to more customers and more revenue."
SEO Connects the Search Engine Algorithms With Your Website's Content
Regardless of your website's goal or industry niche, all SEO techniques have one thing in common: They look at ways to optimize your website's content, keywords, and links to help search engines rank your website higher in the search results when someone searches for something related to your keywords, content, or brand name.
According to HubSpot, SEO needs to address the key factors that all search engines use to determine the value of your website's content — and therefore how high in the search results your website or specific landing page should appear:
- The intent or meaning behind why someone is searching for a specific term or question
- The relevance between what someone searches for, and the content on your website
- The quality of your content (for instance, a website about physical exercise written by certified personal trainers is deemed by Google to be higher quality than a website where the articles are written by non-experts)
- The performance of your website, such as how long it takes a page to load and whether it works well on mobile devices
Static SEO Versus Ongoing SEO: Why It Matters to Stay Fresh and Keep Your SEO Updates Current
As users' web behavior changes and technology evolves, search engines proactively adjust their algorithms.
If you aren't conducting ongoing SEO maintenance and upgrades, a well-optimized website today can quickly become obsolete tomorrow, causing your search rankings to drop and attracting fewer organic visitors. Google itself updates its algorithms several thousand times per year, including significant "major" changes every few months that dramatically change how it crawls and ranks content. For example, Google's infamous Panda update changed how it ranked how-to lifestyle content on the Internet, causing one major content publisher to lose a whopping $6.4 million of traffic and advertising nearly overnight.
How Ongoing SEO Influences Your Website Strategy
Staying abreast of changes to SEO techniques and strategies provides important guidance to your content, marketing, and overarching website strategy. For example, it can dictate or influence:
- How much content you publish, and the content's format, length, and focus
- How you incorporate other forms of media on your website, including images, video, and audio
- How you organize content on your site, including landing page layouts and your site's navigation
- What keywords and target users your website focuses on
Embrace the Power of Ongoing SEO
Caroline Forsey, an expert in thought leadership and marketing content, looked at the survey results from more than 400 of the world's leading web analysts to predict the biggest SEO trends of 2024. According to her data, some of the top changes in SEO strategies this year include:
- A heavier emphasis on expertise, meaning the content on your website should come from experts in your related field (including bylines and author bios that demonstrate the author's credentials and experience on the topic they're writing about)
- A renewed emphasis on first-person, credible content, especially as more websites generate high volumes of low-quality AI content (Google itself has announced upcoming changes to tackle low-value articles created by AI)
- A priority on websites that are deemed trustworthy, such as e-commerce sites with well-rated customer service, or content sites that do a good job of citing trustworthy research and statistics
- Bonus points on content that is creative and original and doesn't simply rehash content found on other sites
Of course, these SEO trends will inevitably change every year, and ongoing SEO will keep you competitive no matter what Google, Bing, and other search engines do. No matter your website's industry or content strategy, ongoing SEO requires that you:
- Focus on keeping your content fresh and high quality, including new blog posts or regularly refreshing and updating old product descriptions or articles
- Conduct keyword research often, since the terms or phrases that your core audience uses will evolve over time
- Maintain your website's overarching performance, such as mobile-friendliness as mobile devices evolve, and page load speed
- Build a diverse portfolio of high-quality backlinks from authoritative websites within your niche, which may include outreach campaigns, getting others in your industry to write guest blogs, and participating in online forums or communities
- Keep on top of technical and performance metrics, such as scanning your site for broken links (and fixing the links you uncover) and using tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to track organic traffic, keyword rankings, click-through rates, and conversion rates
- Stay on top of algorithm changes so you can adapt your SEO strategy in real-time
Some website owners think of SEO as the first step of their promotional strategy. But it's less a first step, and more an ongoing journey to ensure you, your brand, and your content stay relevant in such a competitive atmosphere. Whether you choose to go it alone and take a DIY approach to SEO, or you choose to consult with a digital marketing and SEO agency, check in often and make sure your SEO evolves as the world around you evolves.
The beginning of a new year is the perfect time to refresh the strategies and procedures that will carry your business toward its goals. Many business owners spend most of the year bogged down in operational details — pulling the oars rather than steering the ship — so this is a vital time to look at overall objectives for the company.
But mistakes made when planning for the year could steer you off course rather than moving you forward. As you set out your annual overview, make sure to avoid these common errors and oversights.
1. Not Setting Aside Time for Planning
One of the most frequent errors in business planning is not allocating enough time for it. This often results from trying to do too many things at once or unrealistic expectations.
Underestimating the amount of time necessary for proper planning will only create more work down the road and could jeopardize the success of your business initiatives.
2. Budgeting Optimistically
If you weren't an optimist, you probably wouldn't have started a business. But the same positive outlook that helps you see possibilities and strive for goals can also cause problems.
Usually, entrepreneurs create a financial forecast based on previous years' data. But if the resulting numbers aren't what they hoped for, some people are tempted to manipulate the data to make the end results look better instead of facing the problems the numbers reveal.
If your projections aren't showing you the results you want, you have to adjust your procedures rather than your projections. Find ways to cut costs, increase profit margins, or increase sales to deliver realistic numbers that will help you meet your business goals.
3. Not Allocating Resources Effectively
One of the most critical elements in any plan is an accurate assessment of what resources are needed to accomplish its objectives, whether time, money, people, or other assets. Unfortunately, one area that is often neglected is marketing and sales.
Many businesses allocate the lion's share of their resources to production or administration and neglect these essential functions. Without a consistent flow of leads and new customers, your business will eventually run out of steam.
4. Focusing on Short-Term Goals Over Long-Term Objectives
It's natural for entrepreneurs to be driven by short-term goals, especially in the early stages of development. But this can also lead to problems, such as putting off long-term projects and objectives because they don't contribute directly to the bottom line immediately.
If you know your long-term objectives, you can choose short-term goals that move you in that direction. That might mean developing a product or service with a long-term impact rather than one that offers quick results but doesn't scale well.
5. Not Assigning Responsibility for Targets
When no one is given responsibility for a goal, it often languishes. If you've ever heard your leadership team talk in circles at meeting after meeting — bringing up the same issues and chewing over the same potential solutions again and again — this might be your issue.
A specific member of your team should own each goal. That individual should know exactly what milestones they're responsible for, what metrics they should be following, and how often they need to report on progress.
Without that kind of leadership and accountability, targets are often neglected.
6. Focusing on Sales Rather Than Profit
It's a common mistake to tie all goals into sales or revenue. If your staff, from leadership down, feels that their performance is being measured strictly by sales numbers, they could make decisions that would sacrifice profit margins.
For example, they might offer excessive discounts to win business or put too much emphasis on selling attractively priced loss leader items or services instead of focusing on profitable cross-selling tactics. Those aren't sustainable strategies in the long term.
To counteract this, make sure everyone in a decision-making role knows your break-even price points and understands your profit margin goals.
7. Not Having a Plan B
No one can predict the future, and even the best-laid plans often go astray. That's why it's essential to have a plan B (and C, D, and E) for every goal you set.
When something unexpected happens, your business should be able to adapt without missing a beat. That might mean having a different plan for meeting a goal, or it might mean abandoning the goal altogether and recalculating.
In Conclusion
Strategic planning is vitally important, and the beginning of the year is a perfect time to take a broad look at how your business is performing and where it's headed.
Avoiding these common mistakes will help you stay on track and achieve your business goals.