Once you achieve your SEO goals and have a sustainable stream of organic traffic, is it time to refocus budgets to other channels? Can you really “complete” SEO, or should it be continuous?
In this guide, we’ll answer just that and share some top tips for implementing a continuous SEO strategy.
We’ve established that you can’t just start and stop SEO and that a continuous SEO strategy is the way forward.
A continuous SEO strategy can range from updating your old content to regularly updating your SOPs to form a more efficient and effective SEO process.
Here are my top five tips for rolling out a continuous SEO strategy.
1. Continuously monitor the technical health of your site
Technical SEO is the crucial foundation of any SEO campaign. Given how big an impact one technical hitch could have on your rankings, adopting a proactive approach is essential.
Sure, conducting a technical audit at the start of an SEO campaign is incredibly useful. However, I find the approach of only doing a technical audit once every six to 12 months as insufficient.
In that interim period, one negative technical change may result in you scrambling to work out what caused a loss in rankings.
With Ahrefs’ Site Audit, you can set your crawls to run on an automated schedule—be it a daily, weekly, or monthly audit.
You can also schedule the exact time for the audit to run, meaning you’ll have the results from the audit ready at a time that suits you best.
You’ll be able to compare your results against previous crawls too. So if you notice the number of errors is slightly higher than in recent audits, you’ll know a technical issue has crept in.
I personally like to run these audits at least weekly with regular manual checks in between. This supports a proactive approach to SEO. It also means technical issues are captured as and when they happen, as opposed to several months down the line in a technical audit.
2. Automate repetitive tasks
A continuous SEO strategy doesn’t just require you to “do more SEO,” but also to “do SEO” more effectively.
We just touched on how you can automate your technical auditing by scheduling that on Site Audit. This is a great start for making your SEO workflow more efficient, but we don’t have to stop there.
Since ChatGPT was born into the world, I’m sure we’ve all been presented with the “top five ChatGPT prompts to automate your workflow.”
I have no doubt we can all agree that the social media craze for ChatGPT prompts has diluted the conversation somewhat.
To save you from the torture of reading these dreaded Twitter threads, Ahrefs’ Si Quan Ong has reviewed and shared some of the best ChatGPT prompts for SEOs and the ones you should avoid (no matter how many Twitter threads they appear in).
One of my favorite ChatGPT prompts is to generate outlines for content.
Ultimately, my final outline will always look nothing like the initial ChatGPT response. That said, I find this helps get those important “creative juices” flowing while I’m in that ideation phase. This leads to much more efficient production of content outlines.
Keen to learn more about SEO automation? Check out Fraser McCulloch’s automation tips for these nine common SEO tasks.
3. Review and update existing content
Content can naturally become outdated over time. And users can usually tell when an article feels old.
If you wait too long to update your content, your competitors could have:
- Information that’s more up to date.
- Statistics and analysis from more recent datasets.
- Case studies that are more relevant to today’s questions.
Ultimately, it’s Google’s job to ensure users have a good experience when they click through to content via the search results. So if your competitors are doing a good job at keeping their content up to date and you are not, you’ll likely lose out in the rankings.
Google uses a ranking factor called Query Deserves Freshness (QDF) to determine how fresh a piece of content should be in order to rank for a particular search term.
This ranking signal is pretty much what it says on the tin. If Google determines that users are looking for fresh content in their searches, it will look to prioritize fresh content in the rankings.
Google leans on news sites, blog posts, and search requests to determine when users are looking for fresh content in their searches. In 2007, Amit Singhal (former VP at Google) talked about this in an article for The New York Times:
The QDF solution revolves around determining whether a topic is “hot.” If news sites or blog posts are actively writing about a topic, the model figures that it is one for which users are more likely to want current information.
We shouldn’t interpret QDF as just applying to news items. What could seem like an “evergreen” keyword could soon need fresh content—should there be a strong rise in related news posts and skyrocketing search demand.
To learn more, Ahrefs’ Josh Hardwick has a guide on implementing an SEO content republishing strategy.
4. Continue to look for new content opportunities
As the demands from users change over time, this is reflected in the queries they search for online. In turn, this means that new content opportunities will arise every now and then.
You can stay on top of new content opportunities by:
- Regularly conducting keyword research.
- Regularly checking for keyword/content gaps between you and your competitors.
Ahrefs’ new Competitive Analysis tool is great for seeing what keywords your competitors rank for that you don’t.
Start off by entering your domain as the target and then the domains of your competitors.
In just a few clicks, you’ll be presented with a list of keywords that your competitors rank for (within the top 10 positions by default) where you don’t rank at all.
I personally like to go one step further and set the “Target position” filter to “No position or custom” with a minimum ranking of 11.
This means we’ll now be presented with a list of keywords that our competitors rank in the top 10 positions where we rank from page #2 or worse.
This is super useful for staying on top of what content your competitors are rolling out and what keyword gaps you may need to jump on.
5. Monitor and review your performance frequently
Most SEOs would agree that effective monitoring and reporting are essential. That said, I believe it’s an area that can be done more effectively by many.
One example is that many SEOs rely solely on Search Console to see how they are ranking for their top keywords.
There’s no doubt Search Console is an incredibly useful source for reporting and should be included in reports. That said, I don’t see it as the most effective tool to measure ranking performance. Here’s why:
- Average ranking data is often heavily skewed by irrelevant searches (e.g., irrelevant locations).
- Data lag means you can’t see how you are ranking for a keyword today.
- You can’t compare the share of voice and rankings against competitors.
A rank tracking tool like Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker is essential for daily ranking updates for your domain and your competitors. You’ll also benefit from useful metrics like share of voice and estimated traffic.
To get started with Rank Tracker, simply set your location, enter your keywords from your own keyword lists, and hit “continue.” Don’t forget to include your competitors on the next step too.
In no time, you’ll start to see ranking data pull through for your keyword list, such as the respective ranking positions and ranking URLs.
Don’t forget to connect Ahrefs up to your custom SEO dashboards, whether that’s Looker Studio or through API calls.
Final thoughts
SEO, as an ongoing and continuous strategy, should be non-negotiable.
As tempting as it may be to refocus budgets to other channels or rest on your laurels, complacency is a huge risk to organic performance.
Implement a continuous SEO strategy by:
- Regularly monitoring the technical health of your site.
- Automating repetitive tasks.
- Reviewing and updating existing content.
- Looking for new content opportunities.
- Reviewing your performance frequently.
Have any questions? Ping me on Twitter and let me know.
