SEO can be fickle in terms of results – both in terms of what works, how quickly you can expect results, and how long before the next algorithm update. For all the important and urgent improvements we often make, it can be hard to know when (or if) we’ve done enough and whether it’s time to do it again.
In many ways, the work never ends – there is always something to adjust and improve – but finding balance in the workflow is a difficult task in itself.
If you are asking yourself how often should you do your SEO, we are here to help. In this article, we’ll look at the ideal frequency of updates for the most important factors on a page, so you can work with confidence that you’re spending time on what matters.
Why On-Page Factors Demand Consistent (But Strategic) Attention
Basically, SEO is an evolving beast. The ways people search are always changing, so the ways search engines provide answers to those people must change as well.
No single site can reach the top spot in the SERPs and stay there effortlessly, no matter the size of the brand. This is why all good marketers keep top likes for title tags, headlines, internal links, alt texts, and more to keep up with user habits and improve and protect their rankings.
They understand that there is a great deal of trial and error involved in keeping the site optimized as well. It is important to allow time to see if your changes are having the desired effect and to adapt accordingly, so on-page SEO requires both constant attention and patience to be successful.
If you don’t have a strategy behind your improvements, you will be wasting time and resources. Sustained attention does not mean constant review – it means that a consistent and reliable plan of action must be put in place to stay on top of problems and improve as a result. Run page checks and tweaks at strategic intervals and you’ll be on your way to running a successful site.
How often should a page be refreshed to get good SEO results?
The answer is probably that you should update more often than you do now, but the frequency is determined by the types of updates you need to perform.
The answer may vary in different parts of the same site. For example, a blog post about a current event that may quickly become outdated may not need to be parsed and updated as often as a popular product page, for example, because they fulfill different roles. Furthermore, the size of your site and the frequency with which you post new pages will affect how often you should check your site for SEO issues (more on that later).
In general, changes to factors on a page should be driven by circumstances, whether you need to be proactive or reactive in nature. Here are some scenarios that may dictate how often you have to check and update the parameters on the page:
- Changes to products: If things like inventory levels or product updates affect your site every day, you might want to do more regular audits to keep 404 errors and redirects at bay, for example.
- Possible frequency of audit: once a week
- Changes to competitors: If you’ve noticed that a competitor’s site has been doing particularly well lately, you may want to check how it’s improving the pages it’s competing with and compare that to yours.
- Possible frequency of audit: once per month
- Changes to site structure: If you’re planning a structural change to your site, such as rearranging categories and subcategories, you’ll need to perform before and after page audits to see how performance is affected.
- Possible audit cadence: Twice per update – once before, and once after
- Experiment planning: If you are going to disavow a bunch of backlinks soon or make changes to the server, do before and after audits in such cases as well to ascertain the causes and effects.
- Potential rate of audition: twice per trial – once before, and once after
- Algorithm updates: If an update is coming and you want to understand its impact on your site, make sure you know where you stand beforehand by reviewing the elements on the page.
- Possible audit cadence: Twice per update – once before, and once after
Planning your audits for on-page issues in each of these scenarios is a must. It allows you to monitor the impact of changes on your site and improve on-page ranking factors accordingly.
Remember that every situation is different, so take the cadence recommendations above as a starting point and work on your own customized approach. If your checks often return no problems, you may reduce redundancy. If you’re still missing important competitor updates or on-page issues on your site, you may increase the cadence.
There are times when problems arise without you even realizing it. Instead of increasing the frequency of your manual audits and using up critical time and resources that could be applied in other areas, there are ways to monitor your site quickly, regularly and effectively.
How do I check for issues on a page that need to be fixed?
Optimizing and optimizing your SEO is one thing that improves your SEO over time, but fixing pop-up issues can be urgent. Fortunately, we have the tools that can help relieve the stress: a site audit and an on-page SEO checker.
With the former, you can set regular checks to run automatically for as many pages as you like, and get an emailed summary every time a check is completed. It will let you know the general state of your site, including on-page factors such as internal links, ground rules, and thin content, so you can make the necessary changes.
With On-Page SEO Checker, you can get a complete list of ideas for optimization for every page on your site, sorted by importance. You’ll get recommendations for technical fixes for content best practices, so you’ll be ready to fix all on-page issues at your convenience.
Having an on-page SEO checker at your disposal and running site audits regularly, you’ll have more control over your site’s SEO than ever before, no matter how big or small it is.
Does the size of my site affect the frequency of on-page issues?
With smaller sites, say, less than 50 pages, issues with on-page factors may be few and far between, so you won’t need to perform these checks or audits on a regular basis. Every two weeks or even once a month should do the trick.
With sites with hundreds of product and category pages, on-page issues tend to be more common because there are so many moving parts. The larger the site and the more people involved in making changes to it, the more likely spillover effects are.
In these cases, running weekly checks with Site Audit can help alert you to any issues that arise due to other activity across the company or external factors such as changing search behaviors.
If you have complete control of your CMS, it will be easy to make most changes yourself, but if you are unsure or not quite sure how to use it, you may need to enlist the help of your developers. Their to-do lists are often quite long, so it’s not always easy to implement these changes quickly to get fast SEO results, but there is a way to fast track them by doing them yourself.
How can I make changes to a page without needing a developer?
When you’re done with your proofreading and have a list of on-page factors to edit, from H-tags and links to titles and metadata, PageImprove is the tool to fall back on if you can’t dive headfirst into your CMS.
Thanks to a small browser extension and a snippet of JavaScript, you can make edits right from your browser and watch the effects happen in days, not months. If it does not have a positive effect, you can reverse it with one click. If they do, happy days!
Manage on-page factors with a plan (and the right tools)
While it’s important to always keep an eye on on-page improvements, try not to stress yourself out by thinking that you have to constantly review changes and actions as a result.
Instead, accept that you can’t get to everything at once, and arm yourself with a planned workflow that prioritizes the most important parts of your site. This way, you can take comfort in knowing that you are staying on top of your site in a proactive manner, while giving yourself enough breathing room to be reactive when the likes of algorithm updates come along.
Using tools like PageImprove, Site Audit, and On-Page SEO Checker will help you automate and speed up parts of your workflow so you can focus on the analysis and updates themselves. Take control of the future of SEO and start planning your on-page optimization strategy today.
