It would be difficult, if not impossible, to discuss online marketing without talking about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Since the earliest days of the World Wide Web, we’ve all been concerned about making sure our pages can be found in a web search. SEO is the science, so to speak, of getting high rankings in search results. And by now, most online marketers understand that SEO is an ongoing process, not just a one-shot “set it and forget” tool. The question, however, is how often you should be updating your site page SEO strategy.
Actually, there’s not really a clear answer to this question. Generally speaking, the answer is “often”. We all know that it’s really Google who determines what our marketing strategy needs to be, since they receive an overwhelmingly large share of web searches. And they change their search algorithms frequently. According to Moz, Google changes its search algorithms 500 to 600 times a year! Not all of these are major changes like “Mobilegeddon”, but it’s an ongoing and evolving process, and it’s important to be aware of the impact these changes can have on your ranking.
On the other hand, don’t lose site of the old adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Again, speaking in general terms, if you’re getting traffic to your site, and your pages are getting viewed frequently, it’s probably not necessary to make major changes to your site page SEO. It’s important in this regard to carefully monitor your site’s metrics, and see which pages are driving traffic, and which are not.
Let’s look at some of the elements that factor into your site page SEO. Keyword strategy is probably the single most important point here. You can do research for your initial planning in this area using Google’s Keyword Planning Tool, which will give you statistics on the relevance of your keywords, that is, how often they’re being searched for. There’s no point value in ranking high in searches for your keywords, if no one is actually searching for those words. You’ll probably do well to revisit your keyword strategy every 3 to 6 months, checking back to make sure your keywords are still relevant.
Other elements you’ll want to consider include title tags and meta descriptions. Title tags are the source of the preview title you see in your search engine results, and are one of the main elements of site page SEO. Meta descriptions are HTML code which describes the contents of your page. While they’re not visible directly on the page, and aren’t directly a part of SEO, they determine the page preview you see in search engine results. Your keywords should be included in these elements, and should be adjusted as your rankings rise and fall. Revisit your strategy here when you make changes to your keyword strategy, and whenever you learn of a change to Google’s search algorithms.
And of course, you’ll always want to keep your site current with fresh content. Search engines use bots known as “spiders” to “crawl” through the web and index content. Updates to your pages are signals to the spiders to crawl your pages. You’ll want to “feed the spiders” with fresh content to ensure your pages are re-indexed frequently. Needless to say, make sure your updates consist of interesting, unique content, and aren’t just updates for the sake of updating.
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