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.

7/6/21, 9:31 AM

Creating and maintaining a website that regularly shows up in your customers' and future customers' searches is a bit like a popularity contest. Even after your professionally designed website goes live with all of its carefully chosen keywords, your site's rank depends heavily on user engagement. While there's a lot of technical stuff behind the scenes when search engines index a site's content, one of the main criteria is how often users visit and return to your website.

When users find your website useful, search engines notice and boost your rank in the list of relevant results. But first, your site needs to be able to speak with search engines.

How Your Website Gets a Search Engine's Attention

When you click the "Allow search engines to index this site" button in your website's settings, the door is open for search engines to use their web crawlers on your site with "spiders" or "bots." It's impossible to control precisely when a search engine may evaluate a website; the process could take up to six weeks. After the crawlers have gathered information from your website, they organize the collected data using the following criteria:

How recently was the page updated?
How have people interacted with this page and this domain?
What type of content is included with this page?
What topics (keywords) are included in the page's content?

How Search Engines Rank Your Website

Each search engine has a proprietary algorithm that quickly ranks relevant pages into results when users search for specific information. So, a search using Bing may produce different results than a search using Google. On-page factors are under your website design team's control. Your site content should be relevant to your website and unique.

When your website isn't regularly updated, offering a consistent stream of helpful information to users, search engines interpret a lack of activity as the end of a conversation. While your site still exists on the web, search engines may penalize it if you fail to update information regularly.

Your site should speak directly to search engines, so they understand. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a search engine's favorite language.

HTML tags define the title of a search listing at the top of a web browser. Titles must be accurate and offer a snapshot of the page's content.
Title tags help the search engine understand information about the page's content for ranking purposes.
Meta descriptions offer an accurate description of the page's content. It's the reason users may or may not click on the link to your page.
Alt text makes the images on your website accessible to users and search engines. It offers an accurate depiction of the image using words.
Suppose your site includes syndicated content that appears on other websites or has sections of duplicate content on multiple pages. In that case, a canonical tag tells search engines' bots where to emphasize search results while preventing other sites from taking advantage of your excellent SEO.

Search engines use additional off-page data to help create relevant search results, including:

The language of the user
The location of the user
The user's search history
The user's device type

Your Website and the Search Engine May Not Be Speaking

If your website isn't speaking with search engines, the contents of your website will not appear when users search for your business type and location, keywords in your site's content, or answers to questions that your site answers.

Search engines may not be able to index your website if the site instructs them to skip it. If you want search engines to index your website, navigate Settings > Reading > Site Visibility. Click on "Allow search engines to index this site."

If your website tries to communicate with search engines, but there's no interest due to low quality, thin content, or duplicate content, the search engine's bots may decide not to index your site at all. In that case, it's up to you to create a website that reflects your company's value in the marketplace.

Why it's Crucial to Manage Your Website's Relationship With Search Engines

Search engines have one goal; to produce a list of relevant content that gives users the information they want as quickly and accurately as possible. Perhaps your website is built to deliver high-quality and relevant content to users. Then, it's a matter of time before search engines pick up the information, index it, and show your site to users when it presents the best answer to their query.

Does your website need help speaking with search engines in a way that drives customer engagement? Reach out to the Synchronicity team today to learn more about how we can help your company with a new website.

Hokuyo

AccruePartners

How Your Website Speaks with Search Engines