What keeps results once you have them.
WHAT DEGRADES WITHOUT ATTENTION
Content goes out of date Links break as other sites change Competitors publish better content Technical problems accumulate Business details become wrong Performance degrades as the site grows
THE MINIMUM ROUTINE
- Monthly: check Search Console, respond to reviews, publish or improve something
- Quarterly: crawl for broken links and technical issues, update outdated content, check speed
- Annually: full audit, review strategy against results
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
Pages that used to rank and no longer do A gradual traffic decline, which is easy to miss Errors appearing in Search Console Speed degrading as content and plugins accumulate
WHAT NOT TO DO
Stop entirely after the initial work. Rankings earned are not permanent. Rebuild the site every two years without preserving what ranks.
THE COMPOUNDING EFFECT
Content maintained over years accumulates traffic. Content published and abandoned declines.
The difference between sites that succeed at this and sites that do not is usually persistence rather than skill.
