How Frequently Should You Review and Revise Your SEO Strategy?

Intro

Hubspot’s State of Marketing Report 2023 indicated that about 88% of marketers who already use SEO plan to invest more or maintain their current investment in it. Many, if not all, of those marketers will also have plans to revisit their SEO strategy to get more out of it.

But that raises the question of how frequently you should review and revise your SEO strategy with Brisbane's SEO specialists.

While some of the tweaks to Google’s algorithm may be minor ones, they accumulate over time and can result in significant changes. You must be ready for these crucial adjustments at the drop of a hat because you just don't know when they’ll occur.

Lack of adequate preparation may result in a significant algorithm shift negating your SEO efforts. Proper preparation involves revisiting and revising your existing SEO strategy.

Another factor to consider is that rankings on SERPs aren't permanent. Because of the ever-shifting search engine algorithm, top ecommerce platforms are constantly looking for ways to improve their rankings. So, you can't afford to lag if you don't want to lose your position on SERPs. You must constantly reconsider and update your strategy to hold your position or move up the ranks.

Here’s a dive into a breakdown of different key elements of an SEO strategy and how often you should revisit them to boost SEO rankings. For starters, we can group these essential elements under two main categories — on-page and off-page SEO.

Image sourced from ranktracker.com

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO involves tweaks and techniques you apply to your webpage for search engine optimization. While on-page SEO deals with all the elements available on your webpage, three factors have the greatest impact on the effectiveness of on-page SEO:

Keywords

People searching for you or what you offer online do so by typing in certain words or phrases in a search bar. These words or phrases are the keywords that you always need to note and incorporate into your SEO strategy. Keywords are essential to all aspects of digital marketing. Therefore, you must carry out detailed keyword research and get your on-page keywords game right.

Your target audience's search habits will change with time. In response, keyword structure also changes. In 24 months’ time, you can expect the keyword structure to be different from what it is today.

The consistent changes in structure is why you need to work on your on-page SEO keywords frequently — at the very least, once every three to six months. Use keyword analytics tools to research keywords, search habits, and changes in structure. You can even go one step further by using AB testing examples as data-driven inspiration to test the efficiency of your changes.

Content

On-page search engine optimization isn’t just about using keywords. It involves every content asset on your webpage. As such, you must review and revise your website’s old content as frequently as every 6-12 months, as part of your overarching SEO strategy.

Pay attention to the following aspects when reviewing page content.

Content quality and relevance

Search engines want to provide the best (read as: most relevant content) to their users. Google’s recent Helpful Content Update means it doesn’t just rank pages by keyword usage.

The search engine also examines the information on your web pages and will only rank it high on SERPs if it’s good and valuable enough for the audience.

Web pages with high-value and informative content rank higher in search engine reports.

In addition, content quality and relevance affect user engagement and bounce rates. Excellent information that is useful for the audience will get more attention and lead to lower bounce rates.

High bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who exit your website quickly and is a key SEO metric that can negatively affect search rankings. It indicates to the search engine that your content doesn’t meet the audience’s needs. Search engines like Google don’t like that, and they may drop your ranking as a result.

For a business like yours, SEO is not just about ranking high on SERPs. The goal is to get more visitors on the page, convert them into leads, and reduce customer churn. Therefore, revise your SEO strategy with a view to making content more relevant to your target audiences.

Meta descriptions

A meta description is the snippet you’ll find below the titles in search engine reports. They give a concise explanation of the content you’ll find on the listed web pages.

While most search engines don’t use meta descriptions as a ranking signal, it’s still key to getting a high click-through rate, which affects your website’s search engine ranking.

Meta descriptions also influence your site's appearance in the SERPs. After the title, the meta tag is the next element the user will see and consider to decide whether to visit your website or not.

When you revise your SEO strategy, make the meta description as concise yet intriguing as possible. It must capture the audience’s attention and cause them to want to know more.

Title tags

The title is vital to your SEO strategy as it specifies your web pages to the search engine and users. Alongside keywords, search engines use titles to index web pages and classify them to be displayed for specific searches.

In addition, the title is your web page’s primary point of contact with the users, and it makes the first impression on them. As such, you want to ensure you have the most catchy and relevant titles for your web pages.

The best titles will be easy for search engines to index accurately and make excellent impressions on the audience. For example, a title like “The best enterprise video conferencing software” will work great for a web page with content about enterprise video conferencing solutions.

Images optimization

SEO review should extend to images on your website. Assess images on your website and optimize where necessary to appear in searches for specific keywords.

All search engines have dedicated sections for image searches, and optimizing your images to show up on relevant queries is crucial for SEO.

Start by using the proper names for your images with descriptive ALT text for accessibility reasons. For instance, an image displaying a call analytics dashboard should be aptly named with ALT text describing which analytics are displayed.

In addition, include relevant keywords in image names and optimize their sizes for speed.

Page Optimization

Beyond keywords and content, a third major factor with a significant effect on SEO is page optimization. This includes the page speed and responsiveness.

Page speed

Page speed is a direct ranking factor search engines use for SERPs. For example, Google typically ranks slow-loading pages lower than the faster ones.

Customers also prioritize page loading speed before making purchases. Websites that load in one second offer five times more conversion compared to one that loads in 10 seconds.

As such, you must optimize your pages to load fast. Doing this can also help reduce bounce rates.

Responsiveness and mobile friendliness

Many people now access the internet via several devices with varying screen sizes and orientations. These include smartphones, tablets, laptops, and workstation monitors.

Page responsiveness and accessibility indirectly affect SEO and must be part of your considerations when revisiting your SEO strategy.

New devices are regularly getting into the market. As such, you should review your SEO strategy as often as every six months to ensure content is accessible on every device.

All these useful SEO elements on your webpage are crucial to your optimization strategy. You need catchy title tags and meta descriptions to get the attention of the target audience. Also, the main content must be intriguing and engaging to retain the target's attention.

Web user behavior and preferences change with time. The same goes for search engine algorithms. Therefore, you constantly need to research new trends in SaaS content marketing.

Apply all relevant discoveries to your SEO content strategy and implement them. Perform content revision as frequently as possible, at the very least, every three months. Finally, publish content regularly. If possible, publish original content three times a week.

Image sourced from portent.com

Off-Page SEO

People tend to underestimate the importance of off-page SEO to their overall SEO strategy. While we can never overstate the significance of on-page SEO and website maintenance, off-page SEO is equally important.

You shouldn't limit your strategy or revisions to your website alone. Your social media profiles, inbound links, and email marketing are also essential to your overall SEO success.

Social Profiles

You can operate your social media profile like a branch office of your business working in a different environment. Since you probably wouldn’t neglect to improve a physical branch office, you also shouldn't ignore the “social media office”. You can use your social profile like a business card to invite new customers to do business with you.

You should revise and analyze your social media SEO strategy as often as every week. In 2022, over 4.59 billion people used social media. In the same year, the average time spent on social media daily was 151 minutes.

Now you know you have a large audience, but the same content every week will bore your followers. It’s almost impossible to generate organic traffic from an inactive social media audience.

To hold on to the interest of your audience, you need to give them new, intriguing content as often as possible. The only way to do that is by revising your SEO strategy for social media periodically.

Backlinks

Inbound links are excellent, but not all links are good for SEO. Some links are spam links and offer no SEO benefit to your website whatsoever. You should always check all inbound links to your website and discard links originating from poor-quality sites.

Replace bad links with beneficial links to your website. You can gain new links by creating linkable assets and content on your website. Linkable assets could be blogs discussing customer service tips, for example.

Monitor inbound links at least once a month. It'll be easier to spot broken or spammy links if there are fewer links to check. Also, revisit your inbound links every time you make significant changes to your website or publish new linkable assets or review your SEO strategy.

Below are two channels to get excellent inbound links that’ll need regular revision.

Guest blogging

Guest blogging is a perfect channel for building credible backlinks. When you put content on another website, you typically have the leeway to insert desired backlinks leading to your website.

But then, you should always opt for credible, high-authority guest blogs — these provide the best results for your SEO. As such, review your backlink strategy regularly to check the credibility of the guest blogs linking to your pages.

Online reviews

76% of online consumers check out online reviews before buying from a local business. Reviews build credibility and can earn significant recognition for your business.

They should also be a part of any review of your SEO strategy. Google My Business and other local search engines use online reviews as ranking factors. Positive reviews can boost your local SEO, making your business more visible to local customers.

For example, marketing your offerings as a VoIP services provider to local populations will be easier and faster if you already have excellent reviews on local search engines.

Image sourced from firstpagesage.com

Let Your SEO Strategy Evolve

Most industry experts recommend reviewing overall SEO strategies quarterly. If, for any reason, you're unable to do it quarterly, ensure you do it at least every six months.

Six months is a long time for a significant change to occur in SEO and digital marketing. You don't want to be caught off-guard while your competitors are evolving. Finally, remember to test every strategy before implementing it. A quick test run on a potential SEO update can save time, effort, and cost — vital components that every business owner values.