“When can I stop doing Local SEO?” This is an FAQ, and we have the answer. We also know the consequences. Are you ready to find out what’s real?
When Can I Stop Doing Local SEO
It happens sometimes. We’ll have a client who’s been with us for some time, usually a couple of years, and they’ve reached a very comfortable coast-along speed. Their website traffic is up and increasing steadily, their revenue reaches a stable and predictable level, and they’re happy with the business they’re getting.
Then, of course, at some point, they start thinking about where they could be saving money. This is normal for any entrepreneur. It’s important to reevaluate and change course if it serves your business.
But it’s important to think through these kinds of things so that you don’t look back and live to regret a move. So, we thought we’d share some real client experiences we’ve had through the years so you have all the helpful information possible to make the most informed decision.
Here we go…
What We Hear
“I’m ranking well, and business is great, but we think it’s time to coast along. We’ve been blogging and are in a good spot on Google… it’s time to pull back.”
The Problem With That Is
Well, there’s more than just one problem with this mindset. But let’s start with the following:
Your Competition
You have other local competitors that continue their SEO efforts to reach or maintain page 1 of Google while you sit back to coast along. If you don’t keep up with knowing what your closest competitors are up to, you will surely sink in rankings. If they keep up with regularly checking all those pesky SEO boxes, and you don’t… guess who loses?
Real Example
We have a naturopathic doctor client and know there are approximately 200 naturopathic doctors in and around San Diego. All those 200 docs compete for one of the 3 spots on Google 3 Pack, leaving 196 doctors in the dust (aka page 2 of Google – and that’s where listings go to die).
That’s a lot of businesses competing for one of three spots. It won’t take long for one of them to get bounced from their spot if they stop focusing on SEO.
RebelFish Local is based in San Diego, and although we can do local SEO marketing all over the country, many of our clients are in and around Southern California.
How’s your business messaging? Are you communicating as clearly as possible to your intended target audience?
We’ve Also Heard
Too much success too fast from some companies has also been a thing. The problem is that they don’t have the systems in place to handle the growth as fast as it comes to them. This is the better problem to have, but it still leads to challenges, and we understand that.
Real Example
One of our clients, Sun State Solar in New Mexico, came to us in June of 2020. They quickly began dominating in their area and didn’t want more leads. Again, too much business is the better problem to have, but it can still be an issue.
Another client we had, Rabino Winery, for whom we launched a StoryBrand website, sold out of all their wine way too fast. Many positive reviews helped with this. The owner contacted us and actually asked us to take down the website and put the old one back up because it was too much growth too fast.
This is what quality local SEO can accomplish.
What Does an SEO Company Do to Alleviate This?
While the wine company mentioned above may have made the right decision for them as they would not have been able to handle such fast growth, that was a drastic move and we wouldn’t recommend this for most situations.
Need some marketing ideas? These aren’t just for laundry services… you can choose and implement most of them for any business.
It may be time just to downgrade your SEO service
What does this look like?
Well, it just means we no longer do things that help you ‘build’ an online presence. So no more articles or service pages. We are not actively building citations or review sites anymore. And we’re typically just letting them use our review-gathering platform. So we’re still streaming reviews to their website. And then we are emailing, asking for reviews if they want to do that.
Once you downgrade your SEO services, you can opt to have us host your website. This is recommended because it’s important to keep up with monthly updates that are necessary for performance. Remember, a poorly performing website will affect your ranking. So, while it may be a good decision to downgrade your services based on your business needs, you never want to stop updating your website.
Our clients generally opt to do this if and when they choose to downgrade SEO service.
What if I quit RebelFish Local? Can I come back later?
How Long Does it Take to Get to a Sweet Spot?
We’ll start by saying that every market is different. So, it depends on the general market, the type of business, and how much competition they have in their local area. However, we’d say it usually takes 2-3 years to reach a good ranking, allowing the business owner to pull back and coast along a bit.
How Does RebelFish Local Handle This?
When it’s possible to coast along a bit, and the owner is happy with the amount of traffic they’re getting, we do the following:
We have a conversation about downgrading SEO services.
This approach can look like this:
- We can lessen the number of articles we’re writing for their blog(s).
- We can stop updating website pages.
- We offer the possibility of doing ads.
- We can focus more on social media and/or email marketing.
- Solely focus on hosting the website and doing monthly updates.
Generally speaking, it will be wise to divert the money you were spending on initial SEO services to establish good rankings to another marketing area. That would be the smart thing to do, and that is what most of our clients end up doing.
Schedule a call today, and we’ll get started on your Google audit so that you know where you currently are and get headed in the right direction for your business.
