Staying at the Front of the Pack: Maintaining Your Website’s SEO and Search Rankings, Part 1

 Posted on May 19,2016 in Search Engine Optimization

As the world’s most popular search engine, Google reports that it handles an average of nearly 3.5 billion search queries every single day. You read that correctly—billion, with a B. Extrapolating that number, it’s hard to say which direction produces a more staggering result: 1.2 trillion searches per year or 40,000 every second? Either way, the implication is very clear. If you want to attract traffic to your website, you need to be sure that it is optimized in regard to what search engines are looking for in a quality site. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the driveway that allows users on the high-speed search engine thoroughfare to access your beautiful, functional, custom-built website home.

When your website was developed, especially if it was built fairly recently and by a reputable web developer, it was probably designed with state-of-the-art features and functionality. Chances are, it was also created with the existing SEO standards in mind. While rising with search rankings does take time, there is a good possibility that your site took off quickly, increasing your visibility and sending more visitors to your site. Now that you have reached this point, however, how do you stay there? In the world of SEO and online marketing, doing nothing but relying on past success is just about the worst possible option. Search engine requirements continue to evolve all the time, and your site’s SEO must be addressed regularly in order to keep up with the changes.

Keep Your Site Moving Fast

Do you remember when you would connect to a dial-up internet service, listening to the electronic warbling and screeching while you waited for a connection to be made, then waiting even longer for a large site with lots of images to load? Follow up: do you remember it fondly? Of course not, nor do users relish waiting for sites to load today—although to be fair, they are not waiting nearly as long. Loading speed is an important element of in SEO rankings, as search engines do not want to send users to sites that are going to waste their time. Visitors who do stumble across a slow site are not likely to stay long either, often opting to find a faster competitor instead.

Work with your website’s hosting company to ensure that all available tools are being utilized to their full potential. There are also resources available to test your site’s loading speed, allowing you to identify and address potential areas of concern. With more and more users using mobile devices to access the web, site speed has never been more critical.

Fresh, Updated Content

Infomercials are notorious for hawking products—kitchen gadgets in particular—that encourage buyers to “set it and forget it.” The same approach, however, could have a devastating effect on your website’s SEO rankings. Google and other search engines do not expect users to have a good experience on a site that has not been touched since it launched. That is why search engine algorithms reward sites with quality content that is updated on a regular basis.

Adding engaging blogs, relevant articles, and informative videos will not only help your rankings but will also offer a better user experience for your visitors. Additionally, it will make users more likely to come back to see what has been added since their last visit, further increasing your opportunity for converting them into new clients.

Continuing the Conversation

In an upcoming post, we will discuss the importance of internal and external links, as well the positive impact that social media can have on your site. In the meantime, if you have questions about increasing your website’s position in Google search rankings, the SEO professionals at OVC, INC. can provide the answers. We have been offering cutting-edge web marketing solutions to attorneys nationwide since 2008, and we are ready to help you. Call 630-635-8000 today for a free site analysis.

Sources:

http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/by-the-numbers-a-gigantic-list-of-google-stats-and-facts/

http://searchengineland.com/5-ways-to-maintain-your-seo-ranking-248932

http://www.oncrawl.com/page-speed-how-it-impacts-your-seo-and-how-to-improve-it/

http://seositecheckup.com/articles/5-reasons-why-fresh-content-is-critical-for-your-website-and-seo