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.
Nowadays, every business knows the importance of branding, but few truly understand what that means. Yes, you have your logo and your colors and fonts. But your brand is infinitely more than your branding. The difference between a basic brand and one that stands out in its brilliance is understanding the thread binding all those elements together. It’s not a particular look, logo, or name; it’s a feeling. People's gut reaction when they encounter your brand makes them instantly love it or loathe it.
It’s the difference between watching every TikTok, every reel, and scrolling by no matter how many times a company pays for you to see their content.
A brand's value is its power to attract and retain people. How does it do this?
Reputation.
Here’s why your brand’s reputation is crucial, particularly online.
Big Reputation
A brand’s reputation is the culmination of multiple factors, from the values it upholds to the customer service it provides, to the leadership steering it and the extent of its social responsibility, not to mention financial performance. The visual elements of your brand are the public front for all that goes into your company and the reputation you create for it.
That reputation will be forged over years, from performance, perception, the experience of customers, the quality of products and services, and your ability to create an environment that attracts top talent and ensures they’re happy and fulfilled in their roles.
We often get so caught up in the parts of a brand people see, that we forget about the elements they hear. Word of mouth is incredibly powerful, and while positive word of mouth can be a huge boom to your business, negative stories can break you.
Google Reviews
Reviews left of your business on Google are extremely important. These are important because the first thing most people do when considering buying a product or investing in a service is go to Google to check out the reviews first.
Sadly, in the attention-deficient online world we currently inhabit, the actual content of those reviews doesn’t always speak for you. Business owners are busy people - you know that better than anyone. Trawling through reviews to decide which company you're going to use isn't top of anyone's To-Do list.
The star rating can be enough to put people off. Three stars or less, and many will dismiss you out of hand. Four or four and a half stars and they will click through and read a few accounts to see what you’re about. The accounts they immediately go for?
The negative ones.
A solid five stars, however, and those same people are often sold, particularly if you have a high volume of reviews.
The lesson? Monitoring your reviews on Google and other platforms like TrustPilot is critical. Encouraging as many customers as possible to leave reviews is also key; just remember, you also need to focus on customer experience and satisfaction if you are doing this.
Otherwise, all you will encourage is a lot of negativity.
Former Employees And Attracting Top Talent
Just as poor reviews of your products or services can put people off buying or signing, poor employee feedback can make it tough to attract top talent. Your company’s growth hinges on the ability to attract and retain the right staff, so this is far more critical than most people realize.
With sites like Glassdoor providing easy ways to see what employees - past and present - think of your company, ensuring a positive working culture and environment isn’t just a matter of staffing.
It’s a matter of reputation.
A brand with a strong reputation is one people naturally want to join. Gain a reputation for a toxic working environment, however, and you’ll face serious issues. You only need to look at Uber and Tesla to see how problematic it can be when a brand gains a rep for a toxic working environment.
The knock-on effect from this is tangible. Not only will you struggle to hire the right people, affecting your ability to deliver quality and causing customer satisfaction to drop, but being known for your negative working environment will deter people from buying from you.
Employee experience, customer experience, and the ability to attract and retain clients and workers is an interconnected cycle. One part becoming toxic will poison the whole.
Social Media
Businesses work very differently in the digital age, largely due to social media. Whether you are an active presence on social platforms or not is actually irrelevant; when people have an opinion about your brand (positive or negative), they’re going to post it to their social media.
This means that whether you like it or not, you can’t avoid a social media presence.
Not if you intend to build a visible brand.
The more visible you become, the more people post about you on social media. So, having an active presence that is carefully managed to ensure you’re presenting a positive image is in your company’s best interest.
Likewise, some people will try to contact you through social media because that is their preferred medium. It’s easier to find you on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, or LinkedIn than it is to Google your website and find your contact form or email address. If they can’t find you on social, they will become frustrated at being forced to use a method of communication they don’t like - phone, email, etc.
Ensuring you’re aware of messages as they come through, and replying to them promptly and positively is far more important than you might think.
One Final Thought…
Being aware of everything that plays into your brand is vital. Ensuring you’re actively working towards making those elements as positive as possible is essential. But being consistent across all areas is perhaps the most important piece of this puzzle. It’s also usually the most difficult to achieve.
Do you have systems in place to raise your visibility and manage how employees and customers experience your brand? Is your team fully aware of your brand values and mission and effective in maintaining both? Is your website conveying messaging that is aligned with your goals and values? Is that messaging consistent across your social media content, newsletters, advertisements and promotions?
When you're positioning yourself as the business other businesses want to work with, your online presence and brand must be carefully curated, managed and maintained.