Updated: June 2, 2014
Thanks to Jake Walker for this contributed article featuring the link-building aspect of maintaining SEO on a monthly basis. Enjoy!
I’ve seen it a million times. It’s one of the most common mistakes made by webmasters and companies when it comes to SEO. They spend money on an aggressive 6 month link building campaign. Their site starts ranking, the traffic starts flooding in. The campaign expires, and everything appears fine. But then a few months later rank starts to drop. They’ve lost momentum.
Sometimes it takes months, sometimes years, but the fact of the matter is: If you don’t maintain your link building and SEO efforts on a monthly basis, sooner or later, some one will start to compete and take your rankings away.
Now this doesn’t mean you have to constantly spend thousands month in and month out on link building alone. Once rank has been achieved, in many cases you can scale back to maintenance level link building.
For most moderately competitive niches, a few smart moves here and there can help you hold your rank.
The Digg-able Post
Creating a post that is intended for the Digg crowd is a great way to get noticed. If you get noticed enough you’ll be featured in the “what’s hot upcoming section”, usually this is enough to gain some back-links and keep your site fresh in Google’s eyes.
The Information Is Endless
Use various keyword tools to help brainstorm new ideas for pages based on what people are searching for. If you keep adding information that people want, 2 things happen. First and foremost, you build subscribers and gain new readers. You also hold the attention of the SERPS. There is nothing Google loves more than a fresh website that updates frequently. If you couple that with some amateur keyword research for your titles, you will get traffic.
Blogging Works
Yes, using a free platform to maintain a blog does work. People read blogs. Encourage your employees or colleagues to start blogs and ask them for a back-link. Start your own free blog on one of the various free blogging platforms. Update it 3 times a week with fun relative content. Don’t forget to link back to your main site.
Stay Social, But Don’t Over Do It
Building Facebook and Twitter networks is a fantastic way to keep people coming back to your site. When you keep traffic up, you’ll hopefully be earning back-links. Don’t forget to update your social networks on any good news or fresh content.
A word of caution: Don’t overdo it! No one likes spammy messages cluttering up their social feed. So stay fun, relevant, and friendly.
When In Doubt, Reach Out
Contacting other webmasters in your vertical and participating on their blogs and forums is a great way to keep attention focused toward your site. Remember, offering insight and humor are 2 very easy ways to become a respected voice in any community.
The fact of the matter still remains. Back-links are crucial for search engine rankings. The best way to build proper back-links is by networking and interacting with people.
It’s a vicious cycle. The more people who visit your site, the greater your chances are for acquiring back-links. Once you’ve spent the time and money building your SERP rankings, and gaining momentum, it is crucial to keep up with monthly SEO maintenance.
Here’s a mantra for you: Stay involved, stay fresh, stay connected, and hold rank!
Jake Walker is an avid blog builder and search engine optimization specialist. You can read his webmasters journal at www.blogmason.com