Byrd’s Law #92: Search Engine Optimization is a Marathon, not a Sprint.
After we complete a major SEO project for a client, they normally go on a maintenance contract where monthly we review their rankings and traffic and make adjustments.
Why? There are four big reasons why this is important.
- Google regularly makes significant changes in their algorithms. Any one of these changes has the potential of dropping your rankings. It is true if you go at SEO in a sound “white hat” manner, you aren’t likely to drop clean off the map.
- Your competition isn’t sitting still. If they are improving their rankings, someone else’s rankings are dropping… maybe yours.
- Over time, people change. What may have been a hot search term a year ago may not be now, whereas another term you neglected as unimportant may now be hotter than a pistol.
- While the project may have achieved its major targets, that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved on. If 90% of your targetted search terms are on page one for Google, there is still the other 10%. If you are on page one, you can still work on getting onto the top half of page one. And there may be less important search terms that you can now take up and optimize for.
None of this requires an intensive effort, so the cost is relatively small. Over time, the effort can make all the difference in the world.
