In the search engine marketing world, there has been considerable debate recently on how critical on-going SEO is. The genesis of the debate was a statement by the head of a search engine marketing firm that SEO is a one-time job unlike paid search engine marketing. The implication of this is that marketers should question the benefits of hiring a SEO firm on a regular basis.
To put it bluntly, the statement is way off the mark—I have no doubts that SEO is a continuous process, whose success will depend on sustained planning and execution of strategies. If it were only a one-time process, some of the biggest names in business in the world wouldn’t have dedicated SEO teams or agencies handling their optimization plans. If any marketer wants to risk testing out the veracity of the above statement, all they have to do is to ‘optimize’ a site once and then leave it absolutely untouched for a few weeks and then see the difference. More often than not, a site’s rankings will begin to suffer and consequently, so will the search engine-driven traffic.
Come to think of it, the reason for this is not too difficult to fathom. Being “static” at a certain “optimized” level means that we are assuming that other elements, be they search engine algorithms or competitors’ SEO and other marketing efforts, are static too. As a matter of fact, that is far from reality, so the risk of doing SEO and forgetting it is quite high, particularly if organic search engine traffic is vital to a company’s marketing objectives.
The long tail effect
There is another consideration too. When a SEO project is first executed by a search marketing agency, the initial project targets a limited number of the most important keywords that have been mutually agreed to by the SEO firm and the marketer. While prioritization of the keyword list is an integral part of the process, optimizing for a small number of keywords is tantamount to losing out on a lot of potential traffic.
Numerous studies have reiterated the importance of the “long tail” effect in search engine marketing, which refers to the phenomenon of a large number of keywords collectively contributing to a significant volume of traffic, while individually the traffic for each of these keywords will be miniscule. Part of the work that goes about in on-going SEO is really about identifying and maximizing additional opportunities such as these to get more visibility and additional traffic.
Content and organic link building constitute SEO “maintenance”
Granted that the initial SEO effort will involve revamping the technical and structural aspects of a site, which will require very little recurring effort. The major part of ongoing SEO work will be related to creating useful content that is designed to meet the overall purpose of a site and the needs of its target users as well as organically building inbound links to the site.
Marketers are led to believe that “routine” content creation and link building can be handled by anybody in-house and they do not have to bank on the expertise of an external SEO firm or consultants to meet those needs. Perhaps, yes, provided the in-house resource has all the requisite capabilities in evaluating what needs to be done and how, prioritizing those and executing them. While I find many marketers with the high-level knowledge and the apparent ability to think of how things need to be done, the planning and execution leaves a lot to be desired, which ultimately has a direct bearing on the cost. That is probably one of the biggest value additions that a SEO firm makes.
However, the question of whether on-going SEO needs to be outsourced or done in-house is secondary; marketers should recognize that in a world where search is playing such a dominant role, taking the foot of the SEO pedal can destroy all the momentum that is created with the initial optimization. And only if they are absolutely confident that continuing to do SEO in-house can generate similar or better results than by outsourcing it to a SEO firm, should they proceed with such a move. The biggest mistake that I find numerous marketers making is to severely underestimate the challenges with maintaining and improving organic search engine rankings after the initial optimization.
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