One of the things that makes search engine optimization such a great investment is that it provides long-term value. High-quality SEO drives significant traffic to your website, offers valuable business leads, and adds to your revenue. To rank high on search results and maximize your return on investment, it’s critical to spend time on monthly SEO maintenance. Discover how to use your time efficiently for excellent results.
Why Do You Need Monthly SEO Maintenance?
The main reason to set aside time each month for SEO is that improving your search rankings doesn’t happen by accident. To be successful, you need a clear strategy with short-term and long-term objectives. A monthly SEO checklist helps you evaluate your progress toward those goals.
Ongoing SEO maintenance for your website is similar to exercise for your physical health. Working out regularly can be a challenge, but the benefits are worth it. According to many professionals, developing a routine makes it easier to follow through consistently.
Similarly, a monthly routine contributes to good SEO maintenance habits. Instead of trying to handle an overwhelming number of tasks all at once, you can divide ongoing website management into a comfortable monthly checklist.
What Should Your Monthly SEO Checklist Include?
Every business has unique SEO needs, from content volume to the number of keywords to target. This means you need to follow a monthly SEO maintenance program that fits your company’s goals, target audience, marketing avenues, and budget. Many SEOs perform the following tasks each month.
Content Strategy Updates
Engaging content is the meat and potatoes of search optimization. Effective SEO content relies on two pillars: quality and consistency. Monthly SEO maintenance can help with both.
Websites that follow a regular posting schedule — usually several times a week — get significantly more traffic. You can organize content creation efficiently with a monthly planner. Many SEOs and marketing professionals use a spreadsheet with the following details:
- Topics to cover
- Proposed article titles
- Keywords to include
- Posting dates for each piece
- Internal and external links
- Statistics to mention
An SEO calendar keeps you organized. As writers complete blog posts, you can add document links, image files, meta titles, and other elements. That way, everything is ready to go when it’s time to upload an article.
Having a plan for SEO articles also contributes to content quality. You can focus on topics your target audience cares about, providing in-depth answers, solutions, and tips. Those are the kinds of articles search engines love.
Monthly KPI Monitoring
Once you build up speed with your SEO, it’s essential to keep monitoring campaign performance. Tracking search metrics helps you make smart decisions early on about where to allocate your resources. It’s better to focus on the main avenues that deliver most of your traffic instead of spreading yourself too thin.
As part of monthly SEO maintenance, keep tabs on the primary key performance indicators for your industry:
- Conversions (leads or sales)
- Click-through rate
- Website traffic
- Keyword search position or search visibility
- New backlinks
- New versus returning users
- Bounce rate or user engagement statistics
Many of these KPIs are helpful in a monthly checkup because they pair well with short-term goals. Instead of simply setting an annual goal to increase conversions by 20%, aim to boost leads by 1.7% each month. If it’s available, look at year-over-year data to ensure you accurately compare monthly performance from one year to the next.
An excellent monthly SEO checklist should include space to write down observations. For example, if you notice certain keywords underperforming, you could include recommendations for alternative strategies. Follow the same technique if you notice problems with bounce rate, user engagement, or CTR.
Keyword Research
To stay at the top of your SEO game, you should perform keyword research at least quarterly. If your schedule allows for it, though, monthly sessions offer essential advantages for SEO campaigns:
- Greater flexibility
- Improved return-on-investment
- Better understanding of the target audience
- Faster results
- More high-value leads and sales
Keyword research should be an essential part of your ongoing website maintenance. The sooner you discover your target audience’s search intent, the better your results and the lower your costs.
Google Business Profile Maintenance
Don’t forget to include local SEO essentials in your ongoing maintenance checklist. Your company’s Google Business Profile (GBP) is one of the primary sources potential customers look to for information about:
- Business characteristics
- Street address
- Phone number and website
- Products or services
- Ratings and reviews
- Business hours
Why do you need to check your GBP every month? First, to make sure the information is still accurate. If you have a new mobile number because you switched carriers, update the contact info ASAP. The same goes for any changes to your business hours.
Second, it’s important to keep an eye on reviews. Flag and remove offensive comments. Don’t let competitors hurt your traffic with fake one-star reviews or malicious changes to website links.
Website Technical Audits
Generally speaking, you should schedule a deep SEO audit for your website twice a year. Your monthly SEO maintenance checkup is a good opportunity to find and correct technical issues instead, such as:
- Broken links
- Pages that take too long to load
- XML sitemap problems (e.g., missing pages or formatting errors)
- Accidental duplicate content
- Mobile UX issues
When you’re juggling organic content, paid search ads, landing pages, e-commerce products — and a mobile version of your website — sooner or later, errors creep in. By performing monthly website maintenance, you can catch problems before they hurt your SEO efforts.
As part of this process, take 15 to 30 minutes to audit the user experience. Run through the customer journey from your browser or mobile device. Test the loading times for a few blog articles. Check links or video content. Fill out the contact form. Place a few items in your cart.
Action Items for Next Month
Stay organized by checking completed tasks off your list as you go and adding new objectives for the following month based on your monitoring. A monthly cadence provides the perfect balance between flexibility and planning, avoiding impulsive changes but responding quickly as opportunities or solutions present themselves.
For example, if you notice that investing in geo-targeted keywords paid off in local traffic the previous month, plan to expand your efforts the following month with a slew of new location pages. With monthly SEO maintenance, you can consistently test new strategies, observe the results, repeat successes, or shift in different directions.
For B2B SEO, this type of practical testing is a huge help in attracting high-quality leads. It helps you see whether your target audience and search rankings respond better to a large volume of niche keywords or a small volume of more competitive search terms.
If specific pages are performing exceptionally well, keep track of them. Figure out why your audience likes them. Use what you learn for next month’s content. Protect pillar pieces by updating them and fixing broken links more frequently.
Industry Research To Spot Emerging Trends
It’s common in many industries for trends to appear throughout the year. Demand for certain products or topics can surge. Capitalize on the interest when planning your monthly SEO content.
Some examples include:
- Environmentally friendly products and sustainability
- Energy efficiency
- Consumer privacy
- Brand identity and core values
- Personalized experiences
In addition to tracking broad trends, keep an eye on local tendencies. Be responsive to questions or concerns from multiple customers. Your content marketing should be flexible enough to adapt to your audience’s needs with FAQs, buyer’s guides, how-to articles, or topic overviews.
Make time to read up on SEO industry changes, too. Any updates to Google’s search algorithms or user experience should be a priority. Trends to watch in 2024 include leveraging influencer marketing and short-form video content, standing out from bland AI “content,” following an agile SEO strategy, and using storytelling or content with an emotional appeal.
How Long Does Monthly Website Maintenance Take?
Effective SEO is like a semi-truck, not a compact car. It takes time to build up steam initially, but once you’re at cruising speed, your momentum helps propel you forward. The same goes for ongoing SEO maintenance.
With a well-organized monthly audit schedule, you may be able to manage your website in just an hour or two each week:
- At the start of each month, focus on content creation and keyword optimization.
- Track KPIs and make adjustments throughout the month.
- At month’s end, review objectives, performance, unexpected obstacles, and ideas for solutions.
What if you don’t have the time to spare? Outsource ongoing website management to our professionals. Our team divides annual, quarterly, and monthly SEO needs into a precise list of tasks.
Simplify Monthly SEO Maintenance With Our Friendly Help
At Digital Neighbor, we provide bespoke SEO services that address each organization’s unique needs. Our expert team can take care of as much or as little of your monthly SEO maintenance checklist as you want. You stay in control of your SEO strategy, but we lift the weight off your shoulders. Tell us what SEO challenges you’re facing right away, and let us help.
