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So perhaps your website has reached the number 1 position on Google and Bing search. You’ve beaten the competition and you’re happy with your current organic search traffic.
So you begin thinking, “do I even need to continue SEO on my site? Can I stop doing SEO on my website altogether?”.
If your current website ranking is very low, you may be planning on hiring an agency to handle SEO until you get that magical ranking, but then after, discontinue their service.
The issue is that many businesses continue to think that SEO is optional or can be discontinued once they have reached their desired search rankings.
But if you want real growth, then you know better. Your site needs to be optimized. Not was optimized, but is optimized. If you have been debating whether to hire an SEO agency or discontinue doing search engine optimization, here are reasons as to why stopping SEO is not the best idea.
Google’s Algorithms are Always Changing
Google is fairly tight-lipped about how exactly their search engine operates and distributes rankings, so we have to know how to keep up with SEO trends .
SEO work isn’t an exact science and many general SEO practices are born from multiple developers comparing notes and seeing what works.
Sometimes, though, Google releases a big update that shifts the search rankings dramatically. Now nearly every site working on SEO needs to reevaluate their sites and ensure the site is optimized correctly and efficiently in Google’s favor.
There are over 200 ranking factors that affect a site’s rank and if SEO is neglected, there may be over 200 reasons to lose rank, which are also consequences of bad SEO.
Your Competitors Won’t Stop
"Can I Stop doing SEO for my website?" Your competitors would love to hear that from your business. It leaves opportunities on the table for them to take away from you over time.
Competitor’s websites don’t rest when another competitor site decides to stop it’s SEO efforts, which will result in being left behind in the market dust. A large part of SEO is enacting a content creation strategy.
This is because new high quality content is rewarded by Google’s search engine and algorithms. Every business’s SEO strategy is built to overtake the competition.
So if a site stops creating new content and executing a SEO strategy, it is only a matter of time before competitors begin capturing traffic and potential conversions that were once yours.
Your Site Will Lose Traffic
SEO doesn’t take effect immediately, so a website may sustain its search rank for quite a while depending on the market it competes in. Eventually, though, the rank will degrade due to not having an active SEO strategy in place.
That’s when a site begins forfeiting exposure, traffic, and potential conversions. Abandoning SEO, is similar to treading water (to simplify things). You’re not sinking but you’re not going anywhere either. And you can’t tread water forever, you have to know how to keep up with SEO trends.
A site simply can’t abandon the marketing and SEO efforts that helped it obtain the web traffic in the first place. And one of the best SEO and marketing strategies is to put out fresh, interesting, targeted and high quality content whenever possible.
SEO is about the long term game, not short term. SEO isn’t meant to be an off and on practice for whenever you need traffic.
Without new content, a site can lose the ability to create new backlinks and to generate an increase in visits. And the effect and strength of those links degrade over time because Google seems to lower the value of aged links. So keeping a site from becoming stale is top priority.
SEO Keeps You Ahead of the Curve
SEO work involves the research of micro and macro sets of data. Then the questions start pouring in. Why is the bounce rate so high? Why is the competition suddenly getting more traffic? What are they doing differently? What should be done about the drop in organic searches for a keyword? How should the UI be improved? Can site navigation be improved?
SEO attempts to answer those questions everyday in the interest of your business.
SEO allows sites to stay relevant throughout any market changes. Without it, a site’s visuals, navigation, and information will become dated. All of which will result in less web traffic, higher bounce rates, and decreased domain authority.
Link Profiles and Domain Scores Must Be Managed
Also known as domain score, domain authority is a metric developed by Moz. Domain score is calculated through a multitude of factors and link metrics.
Moz places particular importance on link profiles. It takes into account how many backlinks point towards your site and the trustworthiness of those backlinks. Then the site is scored on a 100-point scale.
And don’t worry if your site never reaches 100, that score is exclusively reserved for the most established sites like Google and Facebook.
And those 100’s will stay at a 100 as long as they are in operation. Although the same is not true for a majority of sites. Domain scores fluctuate often. So it’s better to use the scores as a way to compare a site to its competitors. Do not think of the value as the site’s standard. It should be a value that is relative to its competition.
Now without SEO, link profiles are either untouched or harmed because of a lack of management and that will cause a domain score to plummet.
Once again, a lack of SEO means a site can only tread water in this regard. However, here are a few basic ways search engine optimization can boost a domain score through link management and general SEO.
4 Quick Tips on how to raise your domain score
- Finish the core SEO - Before focusing on link management, your site needs to be highly optimized in the first place.
- Create new linkable content - Content marketing with strong links equals more traffic and higher domain scores simultaneously.
- Develop stronger internal linking - This will increase individual page rank (simlar to domain score but for a single web page) and relevancy through anchor text, which in turn increases the domain score. A site doesn't have to be wikipedia with a 100 internal links per page but linking whenever relevant is a good idea.
- Remove spammy backlinks that can penalize your site - Do this before you are penalized. A monthly maintenance of your link profile can do wonders for a domain score.
The Takeaway
Search engine optimization can definitely seem overwhelming, with so many different channels and factors playing important roles, it’s easier to just hope that your 1st place rankings will last forever.
But as we know, a site can’t stop after reaching a desired search rank. It is meant to keep a site running for the long term, just how you plan on running your business for the long term.
Search engine optimization allows websites to grow their web traffic, raise conversion rates, increase audience retention, decrease bounce rates, and increase ROI over time. So keep your SEO game strong, and carry on.
