This weekend is Memorial Day Weekend, which is the unofficial start of summer and the summer vacation season.
If you work at a school, work in church ministry, or have school age kids like I do, you’ve probably been frantically finishing up the busy Spring season, and you’re looking forward to some rest and some time away.
Unfortunately, a lot can happen to your SEO while you’re on vacation, most of it not very good.
7 Things That Can Happen to Your SEO While You’re on Vacation
1) Website goes down – Last week a client who owns a small business had his website go down while he was on vacation. Because we monitor his website, we noticed and notified him. We don’t host the site (just SEO), so we weren’t able to get it back up, but the client was able to contact their hosting company and get it back up quickly.
2) Optimization removed – That client’s hosting company restored their website from an old backup. The backup was made before we optimized their website, so when it was restored, all of the optimization was lost. Because we monitor changes to our SEO clients websites, we noticed this problem and immediately notified the client.
3) Search engine settings problems – Two months ago, another client (a church) changed a file in the website and accidentally blocked all search engines from being able to read their website. Because we monitor their Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools accounts, we detected the problem and notified the client. The client corrected the mistake and the effect on their search listings quickly rebounded.
4) Content removed or changed – Often while on vacation, the person who usually updates the website will delegate that responsibility to someone else. Sometimes that person removes or changes the website content in a way that could hurt search rankings. We seen this numerous times. Again because of our monitoring, we detect this, notify the client and address the issue before it causes their search rankings to drop.
5) Search engines change – Earlier this month I wrote about the 1,653 search engine changes Google made last year. Crazy huh? That means when you take a week off, on average Google will launch 32 changes to their search engine.
6) Content stops – Creating new, useful, optimized content and sharing that content is an important part of many SEO plans. For many organizations, that content stops when the person creating and sharing that content is on vacation. This can cause progress on search marketing to stop or even decline.
With all the potential problems that can affect your search engine optimization, search rankings and search traffic, you might be afraid to take a vacation. But there is a 7th thing that can happen to your SEO while you’re on vacation…
7) SEO continues worry-free – If you want to be able to take breaks and get away, it’s essential to delegate responsibilities to someone you trust will fulfill them well. If you delegate your SEO to a Christian SEO professional who monitors your website, your SEO, and the search engines, you can go on vacation with the peace of mind that your people will continue to find your website and connect with your organization while you’re away.
As it says in Ecclesiastes…
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens. -Ecclesiastes 3:1
There is a time for rest, relaxation and recovery from a busy season, but most of just can’t just leave town on a whim. We have to prepare for time away. The same is true for your search marketing.
Discuss it
- Are you planning some time away this summer? Tell us about it?
- What are you doing to prepare?
Crazy how Google change 32 times a week! Thanks for sharing Paul. Interesting read. I was wondering, how do you prevent all these things from happening when you take a week off? do you have any tips for preparation?
My tip is to get someone who can monitor your website and search rankings for you when you’re on vacation. If you are already doing these things yourself in house, train someone to do these things for you while you’re out. If you’re not doing these things now (or not consistently well) a better option may be to hire a professional SEO company like OurChurch.com
Good point. Would love to but maybe sometime in the future 🙂 Thanks Paul for responding!
Great article 🙂 Sure everything will happen to our SEO if we not work hard everyday 🙂 Thank you Paul 🙂
My site rank down 🙁
More great information! Thanks Paul! Definitely taking your recommendations.