Discover how to protect your competitive edge, leverage your established authority, and avoid common mistakes that could undermine your hard-earned SEO success.

You’ve achieved the ideal SEO scenario: ranking in the top 10 for the keyword you promised, driving traffic and growth for the business.

You did it.

Time to celebrate and enjoy the rewards. Not quite.

SEO is never indeed won.

This reality has perks (job stability) and drawbacks (mental strain).

However, staying vigilant and proactive can build a sustainable program that fosters continuous and exponential growth.

This article outlines a general approach to maintaining your top position and delves into three scenarios you’ll need to be prepared for once you’re there.

Defend Your Moat

I call successful SEO keyword performance “building a moat” because of SEO’s unique nature — once you secure a top position, it’s difficult for competitors to encroach on your territory.

Reaching this point requires significant time and effort, as you must build trust and equity with Google and the searchers who visit your site. This contrasts with paid media, where you can simply increase your budget to gain momentum.

Once you’ve built your moat, success can become self-perpetuating. Higher rankings lead to more clicks and greater authority, which can be leveraged to strengthen your position further.

Achieving a top spot on Google for a particular keyword can be expanded into related content, different formats (series, podcasts, webinars), targeted digital PR outreach, and even a Reddit AMA for your CEO.

A top position signals authority, enticing users to visit your links and share your content more frequently, creating a positive feedback loop.

You’ve also established effective strategies, whether it’s a high-performing directory where you can keep adding content or a product page whose style and structure can be replicated for other products. Doubling down on these successes helps maintain momentum.

The key takeaway is that achieving a solid ranking builds more than just traffic; it builds clout. A plan to wield that clout is crucial for maintaining and improving your ranking.

3 Scenarios That Will Tank Your SEO ‘Wins’

Even with a solid strategy for defending your moat, your work isn’t over. You need to prepare for three common scenarios that, if left unaddressed, could jeopardize your rankings and job security.

1. Complacency

Rest on your laurels for a month or so and see what happens. Between new or newly focused competitors, algorithm changes, and SERP changes (AI overviews, anyone?), you must be ready to pivot to maintain your position.

Additionally, you likely have plenty of opportunities to capitalize on the equity you’ve built. Collaborate with your paid search, social, email, and PR teams to share insights and double down on what’s working to keep the momentum going.

Engage with your product teams to incorporate product updates or new launches into your strategy, leveraging your winning keywords.

Always stay aligned with larger business goals to ensure you’re using your SEO equity to target the KPIs that matter most to the executive team.

2. Rebranding or Site Changes

Rebranding and URL changes happen, often for good reasons—products get discontinued, or the CEO wants a new name to enter a different market. These changes will impact your rankings; there’s no avoiding it. So, how do you mitigate the damage?

First, communicate clearly with your client or management that such decisions will affect SEO rankings and engagement regardless of how comprehensive your adjustments are.

You’ll be busy enough trying to preserve traffic without having to defend your numbers simultaneously. Everyone involved in the decision should understand the unintended consequences before finalizing.

For SEO adjustments, take a maximalist approach and preserve all the language and keywords possible.

For example, if a product is discontinued and you need to redirect the product page to a new one, see if you can rewrite the new destination page with the language that worked on the old one. If that’s not feasible, create another piece of content with similar language and keywords to retain equity.

Additionally, ensure a comprehensive approach to site redirects and updating internal links, whether for one product page or an entire site.

3. Traffic Isn’t Converting

You might be generating substantial traffic and year-over-year growth, but your boss might be unhappy if the traffic isn’t converting. What should you do?

Test conversion rate optimization (CRO) on the page itself. You may find easy ways to achieve quick gains in first-party data collection, lead generation, or product sales.

Build a retargeting pool of visitors to your site. This is becoming more complicated without cookies, but tracking alternatives should be in the works with your analytics team. (If not, that’s a bigger problem than infrequent SEO conversions.)

Develop proxy metrics to show the value of content not naturally designed to convert, such as content at the top of the funnel. Proxy metrics might include brand search, a general lift in other channels, and how you’re ranking against direct competitors for that content.

Sustaining SEO Success

Securing a robust keyword ranking is no easy feat, so it can be disheartening to realize that achieving it doesn’t guarantee much.

However, by keeping your most crucial business KPIs as your guiding light, maximizing the equity you’ve accumulated, and remaining vigilant as the SEO landscape evolves, you’ll find many reasons to celebrate with your colleagues over a well-deserved beer.

If you need help, check out our monthly SEO packages and let the experts help you.