April 29th, 2010 by Susie

Perhaps you hired an SEO company a while ago with a few clear objectives of increasing traffic to specific pages of your web site and increasing your search ranking position. Both objectives were achieved within a reasonable time frame and you are really pleased with what they produced and did for your website and your company as a whole. So what now? Do you say thanks very much and wave goodbye? The simple answer is no.

Increasing your position within search rankings is one thing. Maintaining your position is another thing entirely, and possibly an even harder thing to do than get yourself there in the first place. Whether you decide to keep on the services of an SEO company or continue with the maintenance yourself, you need to understand what is required if you are going to keep ahead of the rest.

When you are looking to increase your search engine ranking it is all about what you can do with your web content and link building strategies in order to encourage the search engine to display you at a decent position within their SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Granted you will need to research competitor sites and identify any relevant keywords, however ultimately it is down to what you can do to improve your site.

In terms of maintaining your ranking within SERPs, you need to watch what others do, assess changing trends in the market and trace activity within your website to identify how people use it and if there are any areas in which you can improve their navigation and time spent within your site.

For example, you may be in pole position within several SERPs, however if one of your major competitors or another big player in the market suddenly changed their search engine keywords or created some new links, then it could push you from your top spot in an instant. You cannot predict the future, so there is no clear way of knowing if they are going to do this, however preparing yourself for it and reacting to it as soon as it happens can ensure your position drops for as little time as possible.

If you do see this happen, then it is important that you identify any new strategies they have applied and try to create better ones. Checking for trends within related searches will also help give you the heads up as to what direction other companies within your industry are going and prevent you from being left behind.

In terms of the volume of traffic to your website, the reason it is important to measure more than just your clickthrough rates is because with a high clickthrough rate can also come a high bounce rate. Anybody can visit your website, but if they instantly click back out again then this is not beneficial for you.  It may temporarily give you a higher search ranking, but it will not give you the solid and long term presence which is desired.

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