Clients often ask me how long it will take before they are on page one or how long before their incoming orders have doubled (a much better way of tracking success!)

Something that is often unspoken is the business owner’s plan to eventually just stop spending money on the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) campaign. That can be a big mistake. I don’t think Coca Cola will ever stop promoting itself, so do you really think your business should?

So what happens when you stop your SEO efforts? After all, traffic to your site is already at an all-time high, your website has a great reputation and it can now afford to rest on its laurels, right? Wrong.

Stop search engine optimisation, and your site will likely end up like that of a certain company mentioned by Erin Everhart in an interesting article for SearchEngineLand.

The consequence of stopping an SEO campaign

Everhart shares the story of one company that has, for five years, been making all the right SEO campaign moves for its website, from posting great content to efficient link building work. Then, for one reason or another, they stopped making blog posts, getting and putting up links, and just settled for Facebook postings.

Whatever search engine optimisation methods they were implementing, they all just ceased. The result? Nothing dramatic. But gradually visitor numbers started declining. After 9 months they were back at the traffic levels they had had 5 years ago when they started.

You can read the full article here.

Search Engine Optimisation Is Like Swimming Up A Waterfall

Search engine optimisation is not like climbing a mountain – you can’t just sit there and enjoy the view when you’ve reached the top.

Conducting an SEO campaign is more like swimming up a waterfall – you can’t stop swimming or you’ll go down. Stop search engine optimisation for your site, and you will certainly see your Bing, Yahoo and Google rankings fall. Maybe not like a rock, because your solid foundation will still give you organic traffic for a few months, but you can bet that your Google rankings will eventually be headed for a fall.

Stopping SEO Will Always Have Consequences

The reason is that Google (and we all) want fresh, up-to-date content. We want today’s news, not last month’s and we want it from sources we trust and not dead sites. Put that together and you can understand why you can’t stop your SEO campaign AND keep your customer numbers. Sorry.