Ongoing SEO: A Necessary Digital Marketing Function Not a One-Off

Having been in the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) business for over 25 years now, there’s one vitally important concept that is sometimes overlooked: that SEO is an ongoing process and not just a “one-off” action.

Now, of course I’d say that wouldn’t I? After all, I am an SEO practitioner and it’s in my best interests to try and keep the money coming in rather than just conduct lots of single projects, right?

Well let’s be clear from the offset – I have morals and ethics, personally and commercially, and I will only recommend any work is required because it’s absolutely essential. For example, I was auditing a cleaning company’s website the other day and immediately I spotted that there were no measurement tools on their website. Maybe the Content Management System (CMS) with its proprietary web hosting had some built-in stats that I couldn’t immediately see, but other than that possibility the industry standard tools were not on their website.

So my first recommendation with this client was that we install Google Tag Manager (GTM), Google Analytics (GA4), and because GA4 is not present, it’s highly likely that they need Google Search Console (GSC) setting up for their website too (Plus Bing Webmaster Tools, and some social media pixels run through GTM as well).

Essential SEO Tools are Just the Beginning

Adding GTM to your website so that you can then deploy GA4 and a few other tags is only the beginning of the SEO journey. Just having those tools in place alone is not “doing SEO”. However, your organisation’s website will be in a much better place from having these crucial tools in place because:

  1. Google Tag Manager is the basis for deploying all tags in your website and…
  2. Google Analytics (GA4) is the next absolutely essential tool that you’ll need to fire tags for. With GA4 measuring activity on your website, it allows you to have a complementary Google Search Console (GSC) account and the two can connect and share some data.
  3. Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools will show you how your website is performing in the search engines themselves. That is before anyone’s even clicked on a search result and reached your website. That’s really useful information. You’ll have access to data about which queries or keywords search engine users are finding you with (or not – you can deduce that), where your website is ranking in their Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), and which terms users are clicking on.
  4. Social media tags such as LinkedIn and Meta pixels can be fired through GTM, that help define and build audience data, so that your social media campaigns will run more smoothly. Even if your organisation “doesn’t do social” right now, it will help if you decide to use those channels in the future.
  5. Behaviour analytics tools such as Microsoft Clarity or Hotjar are nice to have but not essential. These tools help with heatmaps that measure click and scroll activity, helping you to see if users are scrolling past CTAs and you need a strategy to improve them in your UX.

But that’s enough about the basics; what’s this about “ongoing SEO”?

Initial SEO

Sometimes websites are simply built to look beautiful. The most effective sites balance visual design with robust functionality and user experience. It’s here that the famous design quote “form follows function” comes to mind. I believe it was initially coined in reference to architecture, but it’s a pretty universal application. And even if you’ve ticked both of these boxes, the design, and the function roles, how will your website perform in organic search?

Too many times I’ve seen a good-looking or a highly functional website that hasn’t had anyone conduct basic SEO principles. Yes, they might have the tools we mentioned in place, but there are some “schoolboy errors” I’ve seen time and again. These can be things like:

  • Structure: The designers and developers haven’t understood the structure and hierarchy of HTML documents. They’re just like Word Docs, they need a single heading 1, as many heading 2 as are necessary, and the same with the other heading tags. Failure to even create an H1 tag, having multiple H1 tags, or placing them out of order, i.e. after an H2, is very common.
  • Missing Titles & Metas: Empty title and meta description tags are probably the next most common errors I see. Failure to provide a clear and consistent labelling of what aa webpage is about means that the search engines are not being informed as to what your business believes each web page is about. They can crawl the content and potentially ascertain the subject, but if your competitors are complying and you’re not, then I know which page I’d choose to have a slight advantage.
  • Missing Titles & Metas: Then weak, short, and overlong titles and descriptions are problematic too. You could be losing out on clicks if someone else in the results pages reads better.
  • Missing ALT attributes in images is a frustrating thing to see, not just from an SEO perspective, but from an accessibility point of view too. Remember that the European Accessibility Act (EAA) becomes law at the end of June 2025 and if your website serves audiences in the EU, then it’s time to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). But I digress a little – having meaningful and helpful ALT attributes in your website is helpful for those using screen readers, and it’s a sign to show that you care as well, by making your web pages as comprehensive as possible.

These are just some of the many webpage issues I’ve seen on freshly built or rebuilt websites. Sometimes the web developers have built the most excellent website but their lack of SEO knowledge has left the new site wanting. And that’s what I’m here to remedy.

Ongoing SEO

At last, I’ve gotten back onto the source topic – ongoing SEO.

So why do websites need ongoing SEO? Don’t SEO experts just fix the issues in a brand new website and then that’s it?

Not quite. You see, websites are living, breathing things – Think of them like houses or cars. Brand new houses or cars should be perfect and pleasing. But with natural age and use they need maintenance. Houses need leaks fixed, rooftiles replaced, and a lick of paint every once in a while. Cars need oil and filter changes, regular MOT tests, and parts replaced. Websites are similar – if you build it and leave it, then they deteriorate. Log files build up (Especially with any errors), plugins go out of date, and changing demands from search engines and regulatory authorities demand that websites meet ever evolving criteria such as Google core updates, GDPR, cookie policies, and accessibility guidelines.

Your website is the shop window for your business or organisation and, if you’ve got a great strategy for maintaining and updating it regularly, then that alone can cause problems. That’s not to say you shouldn’t update your site, you absolutely should, but there are more things to consider here:

  • Websites, despite whichever plugins that they may have installed, do not SEO themselves. You may have heard of the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress, and it’s a fantastic addition to any WP website, but it’s not the “be all and end all”. Getting the Yoast SEO “traffic light system” to go green is no guarantee of organic search success. Just because you can turn on all the green lights doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve done a good job.
  • Even if you have such a tool in place, it doesn’t mean that users have the skills to do this work – titles, h tags, and meta descriptions are just too much for some people and they just want to cut & paste then publish their work on get on with their busy schedule. And now AI-powered tools allow users to simply “press a button” and the AI does the work for you. Take it from me, this is lazy, produces inaccurate output, and can even cause more damage than produce benefit for you.
  • As well as your writers and editors, developers may be updating your website too – any new function means that something may be changed, removed, or whatever, and an essential part of your website may have changed drastically. This can affect SEO and how search engines crawl, index, and rank your company website.
  • The tools that monitor your website will show any changes. The likes of SEMrush and Ahrefs regularly crawl your site to help you understand its health. Editor and dev changes can be picked up here, and will highlight what needs to be done.
  • And then there are the search engines themselves. What was done by your last SEO agency may not have been within Google’s Terms of Service (TOS) and you could fall foul of the next core update, losing places in the SERPs because of some dubious work.

These are all valid reasons for why your website needs ongoing SEO.

Ongoing SEO

If you’re looking for a highly experienced digital marketing expert to conduct ongoing SEO for your website, just call me on 07730 499 539 and let’s talk about your SEO project.

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