For many people, achieving the first page of Google constitutes a successful SEO campaign. However, what happens next? Is it possible to save money by discontinuing SEO? There is a misconception among many business owners that SEO is a one-time expense, and that they will maintain their rankings long after they have achieved what they set out to accomplish. In reality, this is far from the truth.
There is a significant difference between stopping SEO and stopping any other type of marketing effort. Ultimately, it will have an impact on everything from your revenue to the functionality of your website. The following are the consequences of stopping SEO.
It Is Likely That You Will Encounter More Technical Difficulties
Search engine optimization (SEO) goes beyond helping you rank higher in search engine results. It is also the responsibility of a good SEO company to monitor your website for any technical problems. It should be noted that these technical issues may also have an impact on the search engine rankings of your website.
If you are unfamiliar with the way websites work, you may not be aware that things on websites can often break without apparent cause. A lack of constant monitoring and watching out for technical problems can quickly accumulate if you do not have a dedicated SEO agency on your side. As a result, they eventually begin to negatively impact your website’s functionality and could ultimately cost you a great deal in the future.
Moreover, if you discontinue SEO, you may possibly miss out on new developments in aspects such as mobile responsiveness, page speed, and user experience, all of which have an impact on your website rankings and are typically handled by SEO agencies.
You Will Quickly Be Outranked By Your Competitors
Staying one step ahead of your competition is essential to being successful online. As a result, it should come as no surprise that competitor analysis plays a crucial role in search engine optimization. In order to stay ahead of the competition, a good SEO agency regularly analyzes and monitors its clients’ competitors.
You can be sure that the SEO agencies of your competitors (or your competitors’ competitors) are watching every move you make if you rank highly for competitive keywords in your industry. Stopping SEO is the equivalent of giving them a silver platter of your precious rankings. As long as they continue to invest in their SEO while you stagnate, they will soon outrank you and steal the traffic you have spent a great deal of time and money generating.
As a Result, You Will Begin to Lose Rankings and Traffic for Your Website
Search engines love new content, as is well known. Whenever new content is added to your website, search engine crawlers return to your site in order to reindex it. Therefore, the more your site is crawled, the more attention search engines will pay to it, and the better your chances of ranking higher in search results will be.
An SEO agency’s responsibility includes making sure your site is regularly updated with fresh, high-quality content that search engines value. Putting an end to your SEO efforts means that search engine crawlers will no longer visit your site, and you will slowly lose your rankings as your competitors become indexed.
Additionally, search engines such as Google continuously update their algorithms for determining rankings. A strategy that worked last month may not be effective this month, and SEO agencies are constantly tweaking their strategies to remain competitive. When you stop SEO on your website, you leave yourself vulnerable to algorithm changes, which may result in the loss of rankings and traffic in the future.
Conclusion
Is it a good idea to stop SEO? It is not. Your business must have a search engine optimization strategy if you wish to be found online. Business strategy should not be viewed as an optional component, but rather as a critical component. If you wish to reap the benefits of SEO, you must view it as an ongoing, continuous process rather than something you can turn on and off as you please.