You have to know when to make changes. Obviously you want to make edits to your overall strategy or even minor tweaks when needed. But when do you make these changes? When is the best time?

Quite simply – most often your changes will need to be based on data. Analyzing your traffic sources, based on keyword traffic, referring sources, pages most frequently visited, goals met etc will be the most common factors. Based on data like this you should assess your strategy on a monthly basis and make a plan to change things about 3 – 6 months into the start of your SEO and every 1-3 months from there. But don’t let that be written in stone, here are more reasons when to switch things up…

6 Reasons You Know It’s Time To Change

1. Positive Keywords – if keyword A brings in lots of traffic make sure that corresponding page has supporting content for that topic
2. Make a clearer conversion path – make sure there are calls to actions and landing pages tied to pages
3. Negative press/keywords – if you see people searching for negative things – like bad reviews. Take action. Here’s your opportunity to jump into forums, set up review profiles, create a new campaign, press releases, social media etc…you name it. The worst thing you can do is nothing or react negatively in return.
4. Following on the tails of the before mentioned, make sure you are adding yourself to review sites, better business bureau, and other directories that matter. They help you with inbound links, a positive image and appear less like spam.
5. Take it a step further, create a campaign around large traffic generators. With success from basic optimization efforts you can easily take things to the next level – video, email, pod casts, blog posts, call to actions, events, contests…the sky is the limit.
6. Test, test, test. True SEO geeks will test to no end even if things are going well. It’s only through testing (anything and everything) that you will be able to truly see what counts and what has a positive or negative effect.