How Often Does SEO Need to Be Done?
SEO isn’t a set-and-forget marketing strategy. It’s a strategy that requires ongoing learning, maintenance and implementation to achieve results.
It doesn’t matter if you’re working in-house or with a client; implementing an SEO strategy is a quarterly, monthly, or weekly task. The duration really depends on your budget as well as the size of the overall strategy.
So, How Often Does SEO Need to be Done?
To stay ahead of the competition, reviewing your SEO at least once a month is important. Without regular updating, you risk falling down search engine rankings due to outdated content.
However, some SEO tasks should be done more regularly than others. For example, creating or updating content can happen daily or weekly. At the same time, technical SEO could wait even a month or quarter. Off-page SEO efforts, though, should be a continuous job.
It also depends on whether there’s an important algorithm update or not. If a big update comes, such as AI Overviews, then you’ll need to test and implement these changes on a website.
Why is SEO an Ongoing Process?
- Constant Algorithm Updates
Search algorithms are always changing. If you don’t stay on top of these, a website’s performance will quickly decline.
Recently, the largest algorithm change we saw was Google’s mobile-first indexing. This pretty much means that Google ranks websites that are mobile-optimised above those that are just desktop-optimised.
And that’s just one example. Google frequently rolls out core updates. Some are more significant than others, but either way, being updated on these updates and changing your strategy to suit them may be necessary.
- Shifting Consumer Search Behaviours
Consumers’ search behaviours also change. For instance, more people are using voice search.
Source: Google
Ranking for voice search requires a different SEO strategy. Therefore, a change in the SEO approach is needed. If you don’t update your website regularly, the likelihood you’ll appear for voice searches is much lower than someone who’s prepared.
- New Search Features
Search engines also add new search features every now and then. The biggest and most recent update was AI Overviews.
Alongside this, you have external search “extras”—for example, SearchGPT. AIs like GPT, Perplexity, and Bard can all drive website traffic by talking about your website with their tools.
- Growing Competition
Like any type of online marketing, you have competition. If you’re not working towards your SEO, someone else is. A keyword you worked hard to get can quickly get wiped out by a competitor if you don’t regularly analyse your competition.
- Continuous Optimisation
Throughout your website life, you’ll update content, add plugins, and do this and that. Over time, it can get messy. Pages become too deep to crawl, load speeds become slow, etc. You need to stay on to this, ensuring your website has the best chance of performing well.
Factors Influencing SEO Frequency
Not all websites are built equal. Some websites need more frequent SEO implementation than others.
This is usually because of the:
- Website Type and Industry: E-commerce stores need more SEO updates than blog sites. Industry changes and the type of industry also determine the frequency of SEO.
- Competitiveness of Keywords: The more competitive the keyword, which typically means more rewarding, the more work required for SEO implementation.
- Content Updates and Blog Posting Frequency: For content-heavy websites, updates and blog posting frequency will increase SEO input.
- Search Engine Algorithm Changes: If a large algorithm update appears, a website will need to update its SEO strategy.
Framework for Updating Your SEO
Here’s a simple framework for what you need to be doing with your SEO across a year.
Daily SEO Monitoring
Every day, you should monitor your Google Search Console and Google Analytics data. Ideally, you should be keeping an eye on traffic trends, keyword rankings, and any immediate technical issues like 404 errors or server issues.
Alongside this, you should be keeping an eye on your audience engagement. If you allow blog comments, for example, you’ll want to respond to them as fast as possible.
Weekly SEO Checks
On a weekly basis, you should track keyword positions and monitor any shifts. You may want to do this as a broad overview and also for specific, high-priority keywords.
Additionally, you should be reviewing your competitors’ activity. You want to stay updated with what they’re doing regarding posting content, backlinks, keyword strategies, etc.
This is also a good time to optimise any recent content (if you notice poor performance). Things you might check are mostly on-page SEO factors, such as keyword positioning, metadata, internal linking, etc.
Monthly SEO Review
Each month, you should really be analysing your high and low-performing content pieces.
With low-performing website content, you need to determine whether you need to update or expand the content to increase rankings. You may also look at whether it’s “worth” the extra effort to get it to rank.
For high-performing content, you can look for further optimising opportunities. This will help you solidify your ranking.
On a monthly basis, it’s also a good time to seek backlink opportunities—network with others in your industry or location and pursue link-building activities.
Finally, you should be preparing monthly SEO reports to track your efforts. Tracking such metrics as traffic, conversions, keyword rankings, backlink gains, etc., is good.
Quarterly SEO Recap
Each quarter, you should be conducting a complete SEO audit. In this audit, you should be covering on-page, off-page, and technical SEO.
Some issues you’ll want to look for are broken links, duplicate content, schema markup problems, and more.
During this audit, it’s also worth updating your SEO strategy to account for such things as industry changes, new keyword opportunities, and algorithm updates, as this will ensure you stay competitive.
Yearly SEO Audit
Annually, you should be performing a complete content refresh by updating outdated content, removing low-quality content, and optimising for new, relevant keywords.
You should also be assessing your site’s technical health. You can do this by reviewing such things as your Core Web Vitals, page speed, mobile usability, security measures, etc.
Finally, based on your year’s performance, set new SEO goals and benchmarks.
What are the Benefits of Regularly Updating Your SEO?
Increased Visibility in Search Engines
Regular updates to your website’s SEO will help ensure that it appears at the top of relevant SERPs. This can lead to more organic traffic from users who are actively searching for content related to your business or industry.
Additionally, regularly updated content helps keep your site fresh, which can result in better SERP rankings over time.
Improved User Experience and Engagement
By regularly updating the content on your website with new information or products, you can provide a better user experience for visitors.
This increases the time they stay on the page, otherwise known as on-page time. This, alone, showcases to search engines that your content is engaging, and they’ll reward you for it.
Alongside this, SEO updates often help businesses get more leads, giving potential customers up-to-date information about products or services they might be interested in buying.
Additionally, regular updates help improve click-through rates (CTR), which can ultimately lead to higher conversion rates due to an increase in targeted traffic.
As a result, this could potentially lead to a greater return on investment (ROI) over time if done correctly.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often should you use SEO?
It depends on the size of your website and your goals. Some websites deserve daily and weekly attention, while others, monthly. It also depends on whether any significant search engine updates become available.
Does SEO need to be done every month?
As a bare minimum, yes, using SEO monthly is essential for maximising your website’s visibility and driving organic traffic. Aim to incorporate it into your digital marketing strategy on an ongoing monthly basis to ensure you are achieving the best results possible.
How long does SEO last?
Between 6-12 months, SEO will show results. But SEO isn’t a one-time event; it’s a long-term process. While the effects of SEO can be felt in shorter time frames, for lasting success, you need to keep up with frequent updates and optimisation over an extended period.
How often should I update my website for SEO?
SEO is an ongoing process; it’s not something you do once and forget about. To get the most out of your SEO efforts, regular monthly attention is recommended.
Final Words
SEO is not a one-time job; it needs to be done frequently so that search engines continue to find your website and its pages useful. If you don’t do SEO actions at least once a month, your rankings could go down, and you might find it hard to get out of the cycle.
