063 – When Can I Stop my SEO?

Now that your goal to make it to the top of Search Engine Results Pages for the products or services that you offer has been reached, can you stop doing SEO altogether and still keep your place in the rankings? 

Many may assume that once they have reached the top of the search engine rankings, the work is done. That is a very wrong assumption because competition is tough and before you know it, someone has already overtaken your place in the top ranking.

Podcast Highlights:

00:01 Prologue

00:39 Introduction of the episode topic

01:47 How is maintaining rankings possible through continuous SEO commitment?

02:40 The experience of Gert's clients who actually saw their competitors take over their top position. 

04:14 Why is it important to have an SEO agency watching over your SEO and maintaining your ranking?

05:56 End

Resources:

The ERICA SEO Framework:

When Can I Stop My SEO

There's no question that SEO is a long-term investment. When done correctly, it can provide your website with a steady stream of traffic that increases revenue and brand awareness. 

But, when can you stop your SEO strategy? Are you still going to get more traffic without it?

Here's another episode from Gert, and he's going to address one of the most common questions he gets every week. Let's go over and understand the common misconceptions about SEO and how continuing to invest in this marketing strategy can help your business grow!

What is SEO, and why do you need it

This is a good place to start for those new to SEO strategies.

SEO is more vital than ever in today's competitive market. Every day, millions of people use Google and other search engines to find answers to their inquiries or solutions to their issues. In a nutshell, SEO is important because it increases visibility, which means more visitors and the opportunity to convert prospects into customers.

However, search engine optimization is an ongoing process that requires dedication and effort. The goal of SEO is to achieve long-term, sustainable website rankings. Once you stop investing in SEO, your rankings will drop, and it will be much more difficult to regain that position.

Is it necessary to stop your SEO efforts?

Take it from an SEO expert, Gert Mellak. Usually, he spends most of his time on calls with clients, team members, and potential clients who want to join their ERICA program. Or, want to get one of their deep dive audits on their site, and in those conversations, one question pops up all the time.

Gert realized that this really comes from a place where he has explained to everybody on those calls that SEO requires dedication, requires a lot of effort to keep things going, build momentums and get those rankings. However, they still ask if they can finally stop SEO and focus on their usual business once they have those rankings and get hundreds or thousands of opt-ins every month, essentially for free from Google.

The answer to "when can I stop SEO efforts" is NEVER. 

Don't stop—competitors are always working to take your place

Even if you are #1 on Google or in any search results for your target keywords, you should never stop working with SEO services. Why? Because your competitors are there, ready to take over in the search engine result page.

There will be other business owners out there who want the same thing, and they are also going to make their SEO campaign to make this happen. So just because you are the best and have your top rankings doesn't mean that you can just stop everything. This is definitely not something you can just leave there and then focus on your business.

For example, business owners think they're doing really well in SEO and focus too much on the business. As a result, they actually saw their competitor take over their positioning. The other ones are ranked on page 1, and they are somewhere behind on page 2 or page 3 or even worse.

How to keep rankings in search engine results pages

So there's really no chance to leave SEO completely. But here's how you can maintain the process and build up the momentum.

Because Google algorithm is always changing, you can probably dedicate a little more effort to it, but there will be a consistent effort. And this is where it's so important to really make sure that you have the right resources dedicated to it. In such cases, think of the following:

• What kind of thing needs attention
• Do you need to focus on technical SEO issues
• What type of article needs to be refreshed
• Do you need fresh content
• Where do they get competitors, get traffic, and where are they versus their competitors when they're benchmark analysis

If you don't think of this, everybody in the team will be used for any other work that comes up, and SEO will get less dedication if any at all. And after a few weeks or maybe a couple of months, you're going to see positioning drop. Perhaps, you just are not as relevant anymore as you were before.

Apply a Maintenance Mode

So to answer the question, stopping SEO is really not ideal. You can put SEO in this called "Maintenance mode." Maybe less work is needed because everything is updated and internally working so well.

Moreover, you need to dedicate a lot of resources to working with those leads and maintaining your content. You could get a little bit of guidance from an SEO agency. Gert and his team can already maintain this state and pretty much keep the rankings. But there are still resources going into your digital marketing campaigns. 

Think of SEO as the right marketing strategy for your business

A second thought from Gert is that if you are actually starting SEO and are thinking about finishing it, you might want to really think about whether SEO is the right channel for you. 

Understanding what SEO actually means and the potential it has is important. Essentially SEO is something that you want to take seriously, and then you build up momentum to get results.

Take note, if you really don't want to break some machine or want to keep going and growing, keep the momentum up and get all those free leads and sales without spending money on ads.

Start taking SEO seriously!

Why do you need to keep SEO with your strategy?

Here's a competitive landscape, "you can be the fastest runner today, but if you don't continue to work out, you're not going to be the fastest runner tomorrow." In short, you'll lose the opportunity as well as the ranking, and it happens when you stop SEO.

However, the success of your digital marketing depends on having a competent SEO team on your side. If you want a team to play around with SEO, by all means, go over to SEOLeverage™️. We can make a good decision and keep you ahead of the competition.

Looking forward to connecting with you soon!

Connect with Gert Mellak:

Email: [email protected]