Content Marketing Abandonment: Unsustained SEO Keyword Rankings Leads To Decaying Search Traffic

First, generating large volumes of search traffic requires a lot of work.

Second, sustaining that traffic requires a small amount of work.

Most people and organizations do the first and not the second. This means they invest a large amount of time and energy only to let it slowly fade away.

My freelancing specialty is helping to ensure that doesn't happen.

Let me share some examples of this decaying loss of search traffic. This data will justify making the maintenance of your content library a priority so you don't become an example of what not to do.

Client Example #1: Recovery Campaign Only To Be Abandoned Later

This client had commanding organic traffic. He lost most of it through neglect before we ever started working together. He started working with me in the middle of 2020.

Towards the end of 2020, we began doing title changes and other SEO improvements. As you see in the upward trend that year, we were able to grow some of his organic traffic back up by the beginning of 2021, but then he decided to deprioritize SEO, and the traffic diminished as it finally died the death it was heading towards as shown in the graph below.

Client Example #2: Great Success & Then Distraction

The following client had a rich content library. We simply updated the titles and traffic blew up because the content was so rich and unique.

But after a season of neglect, with a diverted focus on other things, Google traffic declined without any oversight to mitigate the losses.

Client Example #3: Unable To Recovery Lost Search Traffic

In this case, a new content creation campaign would be required to generate the search traffic they had once experienced.

Client Example #4: The Most Devastating Loss

The following organic search traffic graph is traffic for a client I worked with, starting in 2015. You can see the traffic cycles growing year over year. We increased organic traffic so much, he no longer had to run paid ads to maximize his revenues.

This project involved much more than just title changes. We did everything including content mapping, optimization, consolidation, and interlinking to complete his company's rich content library.

This same client stopped working with me in 2019. He received about two years of marketing benefits after stopping, and then Google traffic decayed and tanked. This client hastefully shut things down without full appreciation of what we had built. He also declined training and documentation on how to maintain it. Over time, his lack of appreciation and understanding led to the loss of the search traffic we built. The graph below illustrates this tragic and preventable decline.

Recovering Lost Traffic & Exceeding Past Performance

If you've spent large amounts of money and time on your content library, there is hope.

One of the awesome dynamics of losing rankings on Google is often how quickly that traffic can usually be recovered with quality content library updates infused with new content creation, as you see with another client's Google traffic in the graph above.

Google gives priority to content that is regularly maintained. So, if you've lost traffic, it can often be recovered. The sooner you address the decline the easier this recovery will be.

Don't lose all the progress you've made investing in developing your content library. Prioritize maintenance and new content creation.

If you want help sustaining your content library and leveraging it to drive traffic and capture leads send me a message. My mission is to obliterate content marketing library neglect to increase your online influence and sales.