Ongoing SEO: The secret to outperforming your competitors

Believe it or not, some people still think you just “do SEO” once when you set up your website and then be done.

Those people are wrong — and destined to miss out on a lot of valuable traffic.

Savvy marketers know that ongoing SEO is critical when it comes to maintaining your search ranking, increasing quality traffic and outperforming your competitors.

Keep reading to find out what ongoing SEO is, why you need and what you have to do to stay optimized. Then get a free guide to ongoing SEO, with more insights and a detailed checklist, tailored to property management companies.

What is ongoing SEO?

Ongoing SEO is the practice of continually optimizing your website to improve performance. It analyzes and improves upon the initial SEO work that was done to make sure your site still appeals to search engines and customers. By working to build authority and trust, you are able to increase organic traffic.

SEO is a constant process that should never end, even when you get to top for your targeted search terms. There’s always a new term to rank for and a new competitor trying to bump you down a notch.

Why is ongoing SEO critical?

There are several reasons ongoing SEO is a need-to-have, not a want-to-have.

For one, search engines are continuously updating their search algorithms, in an effort to return more refined results. If you’re not staying current with algorithm changes, your site could get left behind or — worse — penalized.

Another thing to consider is that your competitors are likely investing in ongoing SEO. If you do nothing to maintain or raise your site’s status, they will inevitably outrank you. That means they will start getting traffic and renters that could’ve gone to you.

And finally, ongoing SEO is critical because the way people search is always evolving. Users are always looking for a better way to interact with search and access information. Remember that a site that’s well optimized has great, tailored content that creates a better user experience for your customers (not just search engines).

What do we need to do stay optimized?

Great question! After you’ve completed the initial set up of basic SEO elements like page titles, meta descriptions and alt tags, there’s still plenty to do.

Monthly, you need to track and analyze search volume, click-through rates and search term trends. You also need to monitor website engagement, so you can optimize time on page and decrease bounce rates. This shows Google that your site is where renters want to go, proving it’s a strong result to return for your targeted search terms.

It’s important to stay on top of external SEO signals too, including local citations and your Google Business Profile. It’s critical to make sure that your brand is represented consistently across the web.

Another important SEO signal includes apartment reviews, so you have to check in on those constantly. Search engines favor properties with a good quantity of high quality, relevant, recent reviews. Are you regularly requesting, reviewing and responding to reviews?

Get a free guide to ongoing multifamily SEO

Explore the need for continuous SEO in this free guide that includes a monthly and quarterly checklist at the end. The checklist will help you keep up with (and hopefully outpace) your local competitors.

This is a helpful resource to share with your team, especially if they don’t understand you can’t just set it and forget it.

Want help with SEO?

As you can see, ongoing SEO requires constant attention. Even if you have the expertise, you likely may not have the time.

There are many benefits to partnering with an agency for multifamily SEO. For example, agencies can help you measure and prove SEO ROI quickly, saving you hours of data analysis every month. They’re also able to live and breathe SEO without having to multitask, and they usually have access to a bigger data set, so they know what works and what doesn’t.

Our clients see outstanding results. For example, Towne Properties’ SEO cost per lease is just $63.

See what our experts do to keep your site optimized. Want to chat it through a bit? Request a consult, and we’ll get in touch asap.