If you want to get into shape, then you need to work out and eat healthy, right?  That’s common sense.

Then once you’re in shape do you magically stay in shape the rest of your life?  Again, common sense tells us no.  You must continue to work out and eat healthy or else you’ll revert back to an unhealthy state.

In other words, being healthy is not a one time event.  It’s accomplished by consistent effort every day, month and year.   And the same is true with search engine optimization (SEO)!

 

SEO Is Not a One-Time Project

A big misconception is that SEO is a one-time project, and all you need to do is edit your website code to get ranked #1 in the search results.  This is far from the truth!

SEO is analogous to being healthy and depending on how “unhealthy” your website is right now you may need a lot of work to get “into SEO shape.”  Then, once your website is in shape, you will still need to put in consistent work to maintain your website’s health ( and your Google rankings).

 

What Does a Healthy Website Look Like?

You may be wondering if your website is healthy or not, and unfortunately, I don’t have time to walk through a full audit in this article.  Instead, I’ll highlight the 2 most common issues I see.

First, a healthy website has a proportional number of webpages to core keyword phrases.  That means if there are 20 core keyword phrases in your market, then you need to have 20 unique webpages that are optimized for those keywords.  If you have less than 20, then you’re missing out on keyword opportunities.  If you have more than one page optimized for a core keyword, then you’re either creating unnecessary pages or you’re over-optimizing your website.

Think of this like a healthy body weight that is proportional to your height.  You don’t want to be too thin, but you also don’t want to be too big either.

Second, a healthy website has strong content.  Content is like your muscles.  No matter what you eat, you’ll never be truly healthy if you do not exercise and strengthen your muscles.  In SEO, content is what Google reads to determine if your webpage is relevant and deserves to be ranked on the first page.

 

How Do You Maintain a Healthy Website?

Like I said earlier, if you don’t put in consistent effort, then even the healthiest website will eventually become emaciated.  To maintain a healthy website you need to do two things:

  1. Continually monitor the keywords in your market and create webpages to target those search phrases.  This will ensure you maintain proportions between target keywords and webpages.
  2. Continually strengthen your content.  The bigger and stronger your content gets, the higher you’ll start to rank.  That’s because Google loves high quality, relevant, and robust articles.  Plus, great content tends to attract more links from other websites that reference your content.  These links will also boost your rankings.

 

Do You Need a Personal Trainer?

If you need help kicking your website into shape, then we can help!  We provide SEO services that include the initial website tune-up, as well as ongoing work to strengthen your website and boost your Google rankings.

Click here to request an SEO quote

 

[google_authorship_badge]