SEO - a one time only thing?
People seem to think that SEO is a one thing thing.
Like, you set it and forget it.
And then everything just works.
Forever and ever.
Nothing could be further from the truth!
SEO is like a lifestyle change.
The kind you make after a long time of eating badly and not working out enough.
It's the sort of thing you do to get to a better place, and to keep going so you never go back to the bad place.
SEO is like building a house where you need to ensure you have a strong foundation.
And then you worry about everything else.
Now often, you don't get to build your own house and foundation.
You have to come in quite late to the party.
And you realise that the foundation is OK but needs some work. And the house is OK but needs some work.
And it's all just one big 'fixer upper'. It needs some work.
You can't do all the work in one go, because there are limits.
Limits to: hours, people and money
So you take it one step at a time, focusing on most important things with the biggest payoffs.
And then you keep going, step by step.
This is what SEO is like.
You need to get your basics right when building your site. But even if you didn't build the site, you still need to look at the basics.
Once you get that right, you have to then look at all the other fancy bits and pieces. The bells and whistles, the feature walls and chandeliers.
When I take on new SEO work, most times its for existing sites.
I look at the choice of domain name, URL and site structure, meta data (titles, descriptions, headings) and any sort of localisation (country, language) if relevant.
Other things I look at include robots.txt, sitemaps (both HTML and XML) and my favourite: analytics (love data!)
There's much more to look at but this is a starting point - because fixing the above things gives us a better platform for growth.
And even if I have a lot of things to fix and the list is huge, I need to prioritise my fixes.
I can't do it all in one go, it's just not possible.
Also, SEO is not just about fixes and addressing issues that SHOULD HAVE been sorted while the site was being built.
Sites change all the time - content gets updated, code is changed and things break. It happens to every website - no one is immune!
And when these things fall apart, SEO often jumps in to the rescue - because more often than not, the dev team has messed up some SEO things.
Even if you're paying for content as part of your SEO service, this needs to be ongoing. Rarely is "SEO content" a one-off.
And because websites are organic, and constantly evolving, SEO is needed 247, 365, to ensure the sites remain in top shape, all day every day.
This is why you pay for SEO every month.
SEO is ongoing.
SEO is forever.
Long live SEO.
Peace,
Jaaved
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