Are you thinking about taking a break from your SEO? Just a short one? Surely if you stop doing SEO for a short span of time there won’t be any real adverse effects.
Well, let’s get into this and take a look at what will happen.
If You Stop Posting Content…
- You will stop targeting new terms and this will result in fewer new keyword rankings and a decrease in new traffic.
- You stop creating new pages that can be linked to by others.
- You’ll stop capturing new visitors and will decrease the reach of your remarketing, email list, and push notification audience.
- You’ll not generate content that can be linked to hub pages. Hub pages often rank very well because they serve as connectors to other pages on the topic.
- You won’t be generating new content that can be shared on social media.
- People won’t be encouraged to return to your site to read new posts. This will reduce branded searches. Branded searches indicate quality to Google.
Generally, if you stop creating new content, it tells search engines like Google that your website isn’t “alive” and active.
If You Don’t Watch for Technical Issues…
It can often be difficult for people to understand that sometimes things break on a website for no apparent reason. If you don’t monitor the technical aspects of your website, some of the following issues could arise:
- Your website is blocked by the robots.txt file.
- Duplicate content is generated.
- A development site gets indexed by search engines.
If these aren’t monitored and fixed when they occur, things can build up and become a serious headache. Your website needs pruning and maintenance, just like a garden.
Also, as technologies improve and more people are connected through various modes, it’ll be more important than ever to make sure your website is up to par in its technical aspects.
If You Stop Refreshing Pages…
Refreshing your pages will generally increase traffic to that page. The increase is typically within a range of 10% to 30%, but can be more. This is because Google sees the new text and if it provides value, the page will rank higher.
There are a few different ways to go about refreshing a page. This can include:
- Adding FAQs
- Adding links to other articles
- Updating facts
- Updating dates
- Increasing the length of the post.
- Adding schema
- Changing the template of a page
One of the key things to look for when refreshing a page is that it matches the search intent. Also, ask yourself if the page you’re refreshing better than the current #1 ranked page.
If You Stop Adding New Pages…
This is often what businesses look at when they ask themselves, “What if we stop doing SEO?”
Adding new pages can be a bit difficult for some industries, but for others it can be very easy. For example, if you’re an accounting business, your search terms are going to be more limited than an ecommerce site selling a wide range of products. However, that doesn’t mean you should stop identifying new keywords and search terms.
If you stop adding pages and creating content targeting new keywords, you’ll lose keyword growth momentum. Not sold on why to not stop with that reason? Well, you can also use these new pages as landing pages for paid search or other purposes.
Your website will grow, and as it becomes bigger, it’s a good idea to develop landing pages for particular audiences and keywords. Using particular landing pages will increase quality score and increase your website’s conversion rates.
But if you stop the process, you’ll lose and advantage over your competitors. Websites who win are websites that convert for less.
If You Stop Checking for Bad Links…
Spammy links are worse than ever. For that reason you should be vigilant when monitoring your backlinks. By keeping an eye on your backlink profile you’ll find…
- People scrape your content and accidentally keep the backlinks in the content.
- You get Google Alerts from sites that have been hacked by malware.
- Competitors will try to use negative SEO on your site.
Update your disavow file at least once a month. If you don’t keep an eye on your backlink profile you are putting your rankings at risk.
If You Stop Monitoring for Stolen Content…
Choose any page on your website with some substantial content. A page where you can at least select about 3 sentences of text to copy/paste. Select the desired text and then copy/paste the text into your preferred search engine. Be sure to put quotes around the text. Search!
Now you might see some search results showing content that’s exactly the same as yours. In fact there might be multiple pages of your site that have just been copied and pasted to create the content for another website. Maybe even more than one!
So when you find this, what do you do?
- You can rewrite the content on your own website.
- Contact the other site and request the duplicated content to be removed.
- Depending on the content, you might be able to file a DMCA.
- The trusty old cease and desist letter.
- One of the more drastic but possible options is to contact the website’s hosting service and request the site be removed.
If you stop monitoring the internet for stolen content, it could very well have a negative impact on your search engine rankings and also on the image of your brand.
Still Need More Evidence for Why You Should Not Stop Doing SEO?
After reading all this, I think we can be fairly certain that you will continue to do SEO. It improves your search engine ranking and that in turn helps your business grow. Sometimes even faster than you think or realize.
Don’t turn your website around and push it in the wrong direction. As your business grows, so should your SEO, so, don’t stop doing SEO unless you want your business to stop growing.
Let’s Talk About Your Brand
shane@3catslabs.com | Call +65-3159-4231
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