A colleague of mine recently stated that he had acquired positions one, two, and three in Google for all his targeted keywords. He didn’t seem as happy as one would expect while I congratulated him. I said “what’s wrong aren’t you excited,” He said “now what!” I said “Just because your number one in Google for all your targeted keywords doesn’t mean the job is over. Your job has just begun!”
You have won the battle but you still haven’t won the war. New changes in Google’s algorithm can cause your rankings to tank at any given time. You competition is still competing and will attempt to make a comeback. You can even still get beaten by a new competitor. You must sleep with one eye open as you constantly monitor the search results. Those number one positions can be lost at any given time.
Link building provides a great way to hold your position. Now, I’m not talking about buying 750 directory submissions for a hundred bucks and calling it a day. I mean building quality links. Ask people in your networks for a relevant link on their site or create a press release. Develop a new promotion to spread across the Internet to build links back to your site. Write an article or guest blog leaving links to your site. Ask your customers for reviews. Get creative! If you give your viewers a reason to link to you, they will. If Google notices your quality links are not increasing, however your competitors quality links are, Google will favor your competitor and boot you out of position one.
Analyze your website and find out what your visitors are doing on your site. If 65% of your traffic is bouncing, then maybe you did something wrong. Perhaps your keywords are irrelevant; maybe your visitors can’t find what they are looking for. Your website might be a turnoff visually. Do your call to actions stand out? Find ways to keep your visitors on your site longer by giving them what they are looking for while allowing them to navigate with ease.
Assuming you will have extra time on your hands, do some good old fashioned keyword research, find new keywords to target, and develop fresh content to target these keywords. There is always room for growth.
If you have a blog, increase your blogging efforts. If you can provide good relevant content bloggers will love to read it and share it with their networks. Blogging provides a great way to rank for new long tail keywords and build links. Blogging also allows visitors to connect with you on a more personal level.
This can also be the perfect time to revisit your digital assets and see where they are ranking. If your digital assets are not optimized properly, now is your chance to optimize them. Videos, blog articles, and images all have the opportunity to rank on the site that is hosting them as well as in Google. Why not increase market share and get your digital assets to rank on the first page of Google too?
Remember don’t think just because your number one in Google it’s time to take a vacation, there’s still much more to do.
