From the very early days of the Internet, everyone has been trying to get their web page noticed ahead of others. After all, why put in so much time, effort, and money if you're not going to be noticed by your customers?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the answer to this conundrum. SEO has proven itself to be a trusted way to get to the top of search results. Over time, users have realized that SEO is a continuous process that requires updates. It’s not one of those tools where you install them once and then just forget about it.
Now, the question here is, how often do you need to update your SEO Plan?
In all honesty, there’s no particular magic number that serves as an answer to this question. As you are well aware, all marketing strategies are determined by Google. Due to the massive number of searches that they receive, they constantly update their search algorithms.
Generally speaking, they make these changes around 500-600 times a year. Now all these changes may not be hugely significant changes. However, it’s good to be aware and stay adaptable to stay ahead of the curve.
While keeping that in mind, also remember that don't try to fix something if it's not broken. If you think that you're getting good traffic on your website and frequent page views, then let it be. You’re doing fine, you won’t need an SEO update in the immediate future.
To get a good idea of these figures, make sure that you have tools to measure the metrics of your website. Figure out which pages are getting more visits while which ones aren't.
To understand when to update SEO plans, let’s look at the individual components and see who frequently they need changing:
Keywords change very frequently. You can either use Google’s free Keyword Planner tool or pay for some more advanced SEO tools that will help you generate keywords. Ranking high in keywords is a good sign for your website. However, keywords are a changing trend. The keywords that made your website very popular this year may not be the same the next year.
Keep note of the keywords that you have chosen, and go back to them every three months or so. If the volume of searches has increased, your keywords are working. If they’re dropping, then it’s time to go back to the drawing board.
In the process of SEO updates, you’ll find that many of the various SEO components have a knock-on effect on the other components. One of those components is your title tags and your meta descriptions.
As mentioned above, revisit and re-examine your keywords every three months or so. While doing this, if you find that your search volumes are dropping, you’ll have to make changes in keywords. When you make changes in keywords, you’ll also have to make the appropriate changes to the relevant title tags and meta descriptions for the pages, as well.
We’ve all heard that new content is great for Google. But it’s also important to alter your old content to keep it relevant. This doesn’t mean that you have to make changes to all the old content that you have on your website. Again, it comes down to the metrics.
If you’ve got high clicks, the content is working. If not, you may have to make some adjustments with the on-page SEO, metadata, and title tags. Make sure you use social media to push the right article in the right place.
Basically, you need to check your content at least twice a month. Those who do it once a week do have a slight advantage, though. Use Google Analytics to measure the visits to your page.
It’s important to have new, fresh content on your website. Updated to your pages send signals to the search engine to index your content once again. This leads to Google bots visiting your site more, therefore giving it more time to re-evaluate your ranking.
The frequency of new content depends completely on the kind of website that you run. If you have a news website, post daily content. If it’s a blog site, try and upload new content on alternate days.
Put in fresh content every now and then, based on what kind of website you are. Each time you post new content to your website, you also get the chance to do some research and use some new keywords as well.
Backlinks play a crucial role in where your website finds itself in the standings. So if you have backlinks that are spam, they could harm your chances to climb higher.
To get rid of bad backlinks, get in touch with the webmaster and ask them to remove the link. You’ll be asked to replace it with an alternate. Use your tools to find out which backlinks are good and which don't work.
There is a tough competition for backlinks. Get rid of bad ones and acquire new ones. When it comes to backlink updates, it's recommended that you visit this aspect at least once a week.
If you’re someone who has generally viewed SEO as a continuous process, then the updates shouldn’t be an issue for you. Remember that one of the most important aspects of your SEO is your social media.
When it comes to SEO updates, a lot of the work that you do depends on an outside influence (in this case, Google.) So what you have to do is to make sure that you are doing constant tracking of the numbers on your website. Make notes of what’s working. Take note of what’s not working.
To be able to stay ahead in the game of SEO, it’s best to be proactive and not reactive. Even if you’ve had a particularly good year, keep checking. Things could be very different as time passes. You don’t want to get left behind because you didn’t bother to check.
