Research by HubSpot has shown that 61% of B2B marketers (HubSpot) state that Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) generates more leads than any other marketing strategy. However, SEO requires consistent management to be successful over time.
To improve your ranking you need to formulate a routine monthly SEO maintenance checklist to follow. We’d like to assist you with valuable information to keep your strategy functioning at its peak performance. This SEO maintenance guide will provide details on what to include in your monthly checklist.
At the end of this article, you’ll find out more about our SEO Melbourne based company and how we can assist you with a winning strategy.
Why Does Your Company Need SEO?
SEO helps build long term equity for your brand. Any company that has a website should incorporate a strong SEO strategy into their marketing plans to gain a favourable placement on search engine results pages.
Without SEO you will struggle to build your online presence. Furthermore, you’ll struggle to target the correct demographic. You’ll have less organic website traffic and your online ranking will continue to decline.
Companies with digital content must develop a strategy to maintain their SEO to create more opportunities to convert prospects into customers.
What is SEO Maintenance?
SEO maintenance is the continued process of boosting your online ranking by managing your content’s optimisation. The purpose is to ensure your content accurately represents your brand and provides relevant information and results to people who search for your type of business online.
You can include weekly, monthly or quarterly tasks to ensure your content is fully optimised. These tasks may include:
- Fixing broken links
- Updating content
- Adding relevant keywords to content
- Updating featured snippets
- Adding meta descriptions to pages
It’s important to do routine maintenance because SEO requirements are continuously changing. For example, Google issues frequent algorithm changes that may affect your online ranking. With a regular maintenance strategy, you won’t fall behind and you’ll be able to maintain your ranking on SERPs.
Monthly SEO Maintenance Checklist
Beyond daily or weekly SEO maintenance most companies decide to create a monthly checklist too. Monthly SEO maintenance allows you to dedicate more of your time to compare a larger sample size of data and to analyse trends. Here is a complete monthly SEO maintenance checklist for you to follow.
✓ Monitor Website Performance
There are many key elements of your website that you need to monitor such as:
- Click-through rate
- Page views
- Bounce rate
- Average time on page
- Traffic sources
- Conversion rate
These metrics can help you identify what needs to be improved. For example, a decline in click-through rate could indicate that your title tags aren’t attracting users or they’re not specific to your customer’s needs.
You can monitor your website’s performance using Google Search Console or Google Analytics. With these two Google tools, you can identify which pages need SEO maintenance.
✓ Check XML Sitemap and Navigation
Navigation errors can start to develop on your website. This is especially true if you’re creating and adding content to your site regularly. Use Google Consoles to check the XML sitemap on your website every month to ensure there are no navigation problems, such as:
- Redirection errors
- Txt errors
- Faulty or missing links
- 404 pages
- Duplicated content
If there are plenty of navigation errors on your site, visitors may leave and you’ll experience a decline in your ranking. By checking your XML sitemap regularly you can fix any errors on your website to improve user experience.
✓ Perform Backlink Analysis
It’s important to check your backlinks monthly to ensure they’re all working so your visitors don’t get transferred to a page that doesn’t work. Over time backlinks can degrade especially if companies update their websites or remove pages.
Google imposes penalties on any website that has poor quality links. To avoid getting penalties and lowering user experience, check your backlinks and ensure they direct your visitors to pages that provide valuable information.
✓ Update Topic Strategy
You must check your most important topics and subtopics regularly. This task will help you create new content that will answer your target audience’s most common questions. To achieve this you can check what your competitors are writing about or use search volume data to check what topics you should cover on your website.
✓ Evaluate Keywords and Featured Snippets
You should check your existing keywords monthly to analyse their ranking status. Check major keywords that may have lost or gained positions to see which ones you should remove or keep.
You should also consider analysing your featured snippets so you can use them as ranking opportunities. Featured snippets should contain at least one keyword and provide users with quick answers to their search query. These snippets are favoured by Google because it improves the quality of search results.
✓ Maintain Local Listings
If your local listing contains incorrect information about your business such as your mailing address or operating hours it can negatively impact user experience. This could prompt users to leave a negative review about your business on Google.
As part of your SEO monthly maintenance tasks ensure that the following details are correct and up to date:
- Telephone number
- Website address
- Physical address
- Business categories
- Email address
Add keywords to your business listing for improved SEO but avoid keyword stuffing because it won’t improve your chances of ranking. Instead, add two to three relevant keywords that will show up on the results page when users search for your business or industry.
You can use local listing management tools to instantly update your information on Google or Apple maps.
✓ Monitor Page Speed and Load Metrics
Other tasks you shouldn’t skip are managing page speed and checking load metrics. Page speed is a direct ranking factor according to Google’s algorithm speed update.
On the 16th of June 2021, Google introduced The Page Experience Update. The purpose of the update is to improve user experience by prioritising pages that have high-quality page performance. You can check your PageSpeed insights and core website vitals through Google. Use this tool to monitor your website and fix any errors that may occur.
✓ Re-Optimise Existing Content
With proper SEO maintenance, you must focus on keyword relevancy and content accuracy. Additionally, you must ensure your page aligns with search intent. While your content may be accurate it may not always align with search intent, or your keywords may be outdated.
To solve the problem, spend time each month evaluating the pages on your website so you can make the necessary changes to re-optimise your content. Through Google Search Console you can find pages that you need to re-optimise.
Focus on pages that have a low click-through rate or a decline in impressions. Outline the changes you need to make and start implementing them.
Important tip: log your changes and store a backup of your page in case you need to restore the original page.
Final Thoughts
Are you struggling to maintain your monthly SEO tasks? At Digital Insider we take the time to learn about what your company needs to reach and maintain its digital marketing goals. We focus on achieving measurable results through strong SEO strategies. Our team would like to assist you with managing your SEO or developing a monthly SEO checklist that you can use consistently.
If you want a reliable team to help you with your search engine optimisation then give us a call today on 0459 845 633 or request a strategy that works for you! We look forward to helping you grow your business through a winning SEO strategy.
