SEO Maintenance Checklist: Ongoing Tasks to Increase Rankings

As search engines become more sophisticated and user-focused, implementing a strong SEO strategy is an important part of a business’s online success. Many believe maintaining an effective SEO strategy can be approached as a “one-and-done” solution; however, this couldn’t be further from the truth. As an SEO agency we’ve learned firsthand that a strong SEO strategy requires ongoing maintenance if a website is to rank for the right keywords over the long run.

What is SEO maintenance? 

SEO maintenance is the routine and regular tasks to optimize a website to increase (or maintain) its visibility on search engines. SEO maintenance tasks should be performed on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis depending on the task. To simplify this, we have put together an SEO maintenance checklist with tasks that you can perform regularly.

1. Monitor Website Performance

The most important task is to monitor the website’s performance, keyword rankings, page views, time spent on a page, bounce rate, conversion rate, click-through rate percentage, and more. Understanding and monitoring these metrics will give you insight into where you’re having success and what needs work. For example – if you notice that the amount of page views on a specific page is lower than normal you can begin to investigate why it might be the case.

There are a number of tools that can help you with monitoring your website’s performance. Two free and very popular tools are Google Search Console and Google Analytics. 

If you’re looking for a paid SEO tool to help monitor your website’s keyword rankings – we’re a big fan of SE Ranking. Additionally, SEO tools (like SE Ranking) allow you to scan an audit of the website to get an overview of your website’s search engine optimization health. These types of tools can give you a quick picture of what can be done to improve your site’s SEO performance.

Monitoring the performance should be done at least weekly, but it wouldn’t hurt to even monitor them daily.

2. Regularly Refresh Your Content 

It’s no secret that in the modern world, content is king, and with SEO it’s no different. Content remains one of the most important aspects of building your website’s rankings. However, quality over quantity still applies. Especially, with the rise in AI, the ability to produce content is endless and while this does offer time efficiency, it can also decrease the quality of the content. Additionally, it’s important to update your content and stay relevant consistently. Search engines favor websites that continue to provide authentic and relevant content for their users.

How often you should refresh your content will depend on your industry and the type of content you’re refreshing. With this said, there are a few questions you can ask yourself as you review the content to be updated.

• Is any of the information on this page outdated?
• When people search for this page’s primary keyword is this the type of content they’re looking for?
• Is there new data and information on this subject that I can add to improve this content?

We have worked with many clients who are confused as to why a page on their website isn’t ranking as well as it did in the past. Their organic traffic has slowed down for their target keywords, and they want to know what’s going on.Many times the primary reason is that the page has old information on it. It might have been great content in 2021, but needs to be refreshed for the modern day. By refreshing the content they’ll see their keywords come back into the rankings.

Additionally, you should regularly evaluate your existing content against current industry trends, user search intent, and the competitive landscape. Be sure to use tools such as Google Analytics (GA4), Google Search Console, and other advanced content analysis platforms. These platforms provide valuable reporting capabilities that can keep businesses up-to-date on how content is performing and where improvements can be made.

Lastly, as you refresh your content make sure that it’s optimized properly for your primary keyword. Avoid keyword stuffing, a practice in which keywords are placed into content as many times as possible with no regard for quality. This practice did have success long ago, but it does not work with modern SEO. Here are some things to consider with keyword and content integration:

– Integrate Long tail keywords

– Perform thorough keyword research

– Keyword targeting for user intent

– Conversational and question-based keywords

3. Analyzing and Managing Backlinks

Backlinks remain a critical factor when it comes to search engine rankings, in which they help build a strong authority and credibility for your website. When it comes to SEO maintenance, there are a few backlink-related tasks that would be helpful.

Assessing Backlink Quality: Simply acquiring a lot of backlinks no longer works in today’s SEO strategies. As mentioned, search engines have become much more sophisticated and are able to spot quality backlinks and no longer favor websites that simply have a lot of backlinks for the sake of rankings. This is really where the saying “quality over quality” applies. 

For quality control on backlinks, several advanced tools can be utilized such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz that can perform backlink audits. Here are some factors to consider:

– Domain authority of linking websites

– Relevance of linking domains to your industry

– Diversity of linking domains

– Anchor text distribution

– Potential for toxic or spammy backlinks

Toxic Link Removal: This should seem obvious to most but many times toxic or spammy backlinks can go unnoticed if not checked out thoroughly. These types of backlinks can severely impact the ability of a website to rank as well as tarnish its credibility. When looking for potential toxic backlinks, consider the following:

– Links from well-known spammy websites

– Websites with extremely low domain authority

– Any website with suspicious link patterns

– Irrelevant or unrelated industry links

– PBNs (Private Blog Networks)

While Google claims that toxic backlinks are ignored, it can’t hurt to report these links to Google yourself. Use Google’s Disavow Tool to report toxic links you find to ensure that they disavow them.

Proactive Link-Building Strategies: While removing toxic links is crucial, equally important is developing a strategic link-building approach:

– Create high-quality, linkable content assets

– Develop relationships with industry influencers

– Participate in relevant industry forums and discussions

– Guest posting on reputable, relevant websites

– Leveraging PR and media opportunities

4. Staying Compliant with Google Algorithm Updates

Search engines, especially Google, are continuously updating their algorithms to fight against “Black Hat” SEO strategies and to uphold the integrity of the end-user experience. To maintain and continue success with website rankings, be sure to stay up-to-date on the latest algorithm updates. 

Algorithm Update Monitoring: Develop a systematic approach to tracking algorithm changes:

– Follow Google’s Search Status Dashboard, social media platforms or other related sources of information

– Subscribe to other SEO industry publications or social media platforms

– Participate in professional SEO forums to stay updated on SEO trends and news 

– Be sure to utilize algorithmic tracking tools

5. Technical SEO Maintenance

Technical SEO creates the backbone of search engine success, and should be part of your SEO maintenance routine.

Website Crawlability Analysis: Be sure that your website is easily crawlable and able to be indexed. Search engines need to be able to crawl (scan) your website in order to assess the quality of your website based on their guidelines.

You should routinely check Google Search Console to make sure your website’s pages are being indexed. Go to the “Pages” section under “Indexing” and you can see exactly which pages are being indexed, and which are not. Additionally, Google will tell you exactly why some pages aren’t indexed.

This is helpful to understand why some older pages aren’t indexed, but it can also give you insight into why some newer pages on your website aren’t indexed.

 Other technical SEO maintenance tasks can include:

– Fix any broken links (scan your website using tools like SE Ranking or Screaming Frog) to see if there’s any broken links on your website). This includes internal links to different pages on your website, but also broken external links. Links can lead to 404 errors for a variety of reasons, but you want to make sure to fix them as soon as possible. Broken internal links will hurt your SEO efforts

-Keep your eye Google’s Core Web Vitals. Google’s Core Web Vitals are a series of metrics that shows how well your website performs for users. From time to time – they change the metrics and it would be wise to occasionally see how your website is doing. You can view your Core Web Vitals here. 

– Perform regular website audits using an SEO Tool (i.e SEM rush, SE ranking) to help identify other technical issues (slow loading pages, redirect chains, no H1 headers, etc.)

6. Local SEO Optimization

For local businesses, especially those with physical locations, local SEO is everything. You’ll want to make sure that you continue to manage and improve your Google Business Profile. This includes:

– Ensuring that your business information is accurate

– Post regular updates about your services and products using GBP update feature.

– Engage with your customer reviews. Ideally, you would respond to every customer review that comes in.

– Add new high-quality pictures

– Adding in new services with a proper service description. Your service description should include a keyword, a call to action, and your location.

7. Competitive Analysis and Benchmarking

At least twice a year, as an SEO maintenance task you should do research on your competition within SERPs.  Look up the keywords you’re targeting, and see what the competition is doing. This competitive analysis would include:

– Keyword gap identification. Are there keywords that they’re targeting that you’re missing out on?

– Backlink profile comparison. Are there backlinks that they have that you could pursue?

– Content strategy evaluation. Is there content different from yours? Would your site benefit from having content like theirs (with your own spin on it of course)?

A Solid SEO Strategy Requires Consistent Long Term Work

As we learned, SEO maintenance is not a short-term strategy, but a continuous process of adaptation, learning, and optimization. 

By implementing an SEO maintenance strategy, and utilizing the strategies we’ve covered, businesses can not only maintain their current rankings but continuously climb the ladder of search engine rankings. Again, the goal of SEO is not to get instant results but rather to implement a long-term strategy that, with time, will pay dividends. SEO is an investment into a business’s future and when utilized with these strategies, it can be a powerful tool for long-term growth.

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