We recently had the question in the OurChurch.Com forums asking if Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services, like the Progressive SEO Management service, would be helpful for older, established websites. I thought this was a fantastic question and decided it would be perfect for a blog article.
Are SEO services helpful for older, established sites?
Depending on how old and established a site is, the need for an aggressive SEO service may not seem as urgent. After all, if you already have the rankings for your most competitive keywords and others, then you can’t really get much better. That said, there are three key reasons an SEO service is still important and effective for older, established sites.
1. Just because a site is older and more established doesn’t mean the site has no room to grow. The OurChurch.Com website is a great example. We have been around for nearly 14 years. We have thousands of members and tens of thousands of incoming links. I’d say that qualifies us as “old and established”, but are we ranking number 1 for every keyword we’d like? Nope. Even as old and established as we are, we have room to grow. So, we continue search marketing services for our own website.
2. I’ve never come across a site that was well optimized for all the keywords from which they could be getting traffic. This means that even though the site is old and well established, it’s not getting the all rankings or traffic it could be getting. Why settle for half the traffic? I’ve even seen a lot of older sites that aren’t optimized at all. Those sites could increase their traffic dramatically very quickly by having their site optimized.
3. The Internet is constantly changing. There isn’t really any point when you have reached the ultimate goal and can stop. There are always new sites coming on the scene and competing for the same keywords you want to rank for. I’m reminded of the story of The Tortoise and the Hare. As we all know, the hare stops running the race and takes a nap. Meanwhile the tortoise is slowly but surely gaining and eventually over takes the hare. The same thing can happen to websites that are doing very well in the search engines, but decide to stop and rest on their rankings. One morning they may wake up to find they don’t have the rankings or the traffic they used to have and they are no longer so well established.
Search marketing never really ends. Techniques change and your competition is always nipping at your heels. I know this may sound a little daunting, but do Olympic athletes ever stop training to be faster or better? Well, yes, they do…when they retire.
Do you have a well established website that’s doing well in the search engines? What are you doing to keep yourself at the top of your game?
4 Comments
Great advise, Kurt. I would also add…
– Just because a site is older, doesn't mean it was ever optimized in the first place. If your site has been around for years but you've never done keyword research, on-page optimization, and link building, the sooner you do the better.
– Sites tend to become un-optimized over time. Even if a site was otimized when it was originally built, chances are the text, images, and menu items have been changed since then. If so, there's a good chance the site is no longer optimized for the keywords it was originally targeting.
Great article. I love your Tortoise and the Hare analogy. I've worked with companies that are just starting up and some that have been online for a decade or more and I can tell you that both situations allow for improvement. Older websites tend to get "cozy" with their position and they sometimes don't see the need to improve. One company I worked with had dropped off the first page for a few of their keywords because they hadn't done anything with their site in over a year.
Just because your site is "old" doesn't mean that static content will win you a top prize. If you want to stay competitive you have to be willing to update, change and improve all of the time.
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That is true that we have to do SEO and marketing in site continuously .We can not stop doing that .If we don't market the site for long time the site ranking will change and our competitor site will go up in search