Pausing or stopping SEO for a long time will hurt the SEO ranking. A short pause may be OK and it may not have any drastic impact but if you are planning to stop for several months then most likely you will face a ranking drop unless you take some actions.
In this guide, you will learn some key steps you can take if you are planning to pause or stop SEO services.
Table of contents:
- What happens when you stop doing SEO?
- How can I pause or stop the SEO campaign safely?
- Can I stop SEO camping once I rank on top?
- I wasted money on SEO & no ranking, can I stop SEO?
What happens when you stop doing SEO?
If you stop running SEO campaigns for a long time, most likely you will notice a ranking drop.
Regular updates and new content additions are vital to maintaining and boosting the SEO rankings.
To understand this, imagine your business and your competition, if you stop your SEO campaign and your competition will continue to add fresh content then Google will notice this pattern and soon it will start to prefer your competition and not your website. SEO Ranking is impacted by various but it is important to pay attention to this point.
How can I pause or stop the SEO campaign safely?
As discussed before, pausing or stopping an SEO campaign is not a good idea having said that if you need to pause due to budget or other factors then here are some suggestions that you can take into account:
- Document your core ranking: Be you take a pause or stop SEO, it is a good idea to document your SEO ranking so that you can compare to assess the impact in the coming weeks.
- Continue to build the content if you can: As mentioned above, search engines prefer websites with regular quality content and other activities like link building. During the pause period if possible, you can continue to add more content even at a minimum level instead of no activity at all. Related: How many blogs do I need for SEO ranking?
You may consider getting your website assessed periodically by an expert to check the impact.
Can I stop SEO camping once I rank on top?
The answer is no.
Even if you are ranking on top, you shouldn’t stop your SEO campaign simply because your competitors are not stopping.
You will be at the risk of losing the top spot even while doing the SEO as others may be competing hard but stopping it all together can make it worse.
Instead of thinking about stopping, you should consider doing even more aggressive SEO work and aim to maintain the top position.
I wasted a lot of money on SEO & no ranking, can I stop SEO?
You are not the only one who may have spent a lot of money on SEO but got minimum to no return.
If you are in this situation first you should think about what may have gone wrong that you couldn’t get the positive outcome from the SEO effort.
If this hasn’t worked at all for you then you may go ahead and stop the SEO service.
Re-starting the SEO
When you plan to restart, do your homework before engaging with the right SEO agency to ensure you don’t face disappointment again.
