SEO: You can't set it and forget it.

I talk with clients all the time about ways to optimize their websites for increasing traffic. Since this is one of the services we offer in our company, it’s pretty important that do our best to stay on top of things.

Often, I get the question, “Well, can I just have you optimize my site now and then, in a year, optimize it again?”

The short answer is, “No. You can’t simply set it and forget it."

SEO, or search engine optimization, isn’t a one time event. It isn’t something that you do one time and then never look back on. It is best as evolving content. Evolving content provides the search engines with new pages and new content to index on your site. It provides your site visitors options to search for.

You can’t expect that when you optimize for something that it will stay optimized because other websites are being optimized as well.

One such example is that of my name. As of about a week ago, if you did a search in Google for Corey Smith, my personal blog turned up as number 5 in the listings. I have neglected to write or perform any SEO tactics for at least a week and my search result came up number 11 as of the writing of this post. Because I haven’t worked on it, my ranking has slipped.

Now, the reality is that some terms that you optimize for will maintain equity for many years to come. You never know why people will come and what the competition will do. One simple example…

On my old business and technology blog, one of the most common search terms that people use to find me is Dear Valued Customer. As of the writing of this post, my blog returns number 3 on the list at Google. It’s been in the top 5 of the Google results for nearly 5 years now. I don’t know why people search on Google for those words. I don’t know if they are looking for a form letter they can send to their clients or if they are looking for something else.

The search term “Dear Valued Customer” may appear at the top of the search engines and people may find me daily because of it. However, none of them have done more than look through a page or two. It’s not a search term that is meaningful.

SEO is a constantly moving target. If you think that it is something you can do today and not touch for a year or two, you will be missing out on a lot of traffic and, more importantly, a lot of opportunity. As you are sitting and waiting for your potential clients to come and find you, your competitors are working to provide search engines with more, varied content to index and feed searchers.