SEO Equity: How to Build & Protect It

Updated March 3, 2025

Ingredients for Organic SEO

Safeguarding your SEO equity is one part of the online marketing equation.  Typically we’re asked by  clients who are building new sites: “how can we displace older, established websites in organic search?” The other side of the coin is: “how do I retain my SEO equity in a marketplace where newer businesses are aggressively competing?” In this post, I’ll answer both questions.

Establishing SEO Equity for New Websites

If you decide to change your domain or have a new one it takes hard work to build SEO momentum. If your business is new on the scene, we recommend:

• Keyword research to understand the search landscape, identifying phrases with high benefit (potential website traffic) versus how difficult it will be to place high (competition). In other words, make your keywords specific. Longtail keywords that closely match your customer are more useful to you than
• Monitor your competition, including brand names and other like-sized competitors who are trying to gain marketshare. See what they’re doing and find an angle where you can make up ground.
• Clean code on a mobile-responsive website that are friendly to both human searchers and indexing bots. Don’t bend any SEO rules. Make it as easy as you can for the search engine. Use schema and AMP if you can.
• Quality content that your potential clients want to read and share. Publish fresh content frequently. Establish a schedule and stick to it. If you have aggressive sales goals… increase the amount of content you publish.

Retaining SERP Status

Matt Cutts released a video on this topic some time ago, that is still relevant. He recommends that established websites not “rest on their laurels” when it comes to retaining SEO equity (and their Search Engine Results Page (SERP) status). If you have a dated site, one that hasn’t seen a refresh in a couple of years… it’s an indication that you aren’t staying current with emerging online marketing trends.

Here’s what we recommend for businesses who have a lead in organic search and want to protect their SEO equity:

• Update your keyword research to capitalize on search trends, the competitive landscape, and map out the new data into your website’s structure.
• Monitor your competition including any emerging upstarts.
• Refresh your website’s look and feel. If it’s not mobile responsive by now your ranking will be hurting. Dated designs with old code aren’t enticing to humans or bots. It’s not uncommon to completely redo a website every 2 years or so.
• Consistently publish quality content… frequently. Consider increasing the frequency of blog posts that are optimized to your keyword research to attract new visitors to your website.
• Consider advanced SEO techniques like schema.org as we mentioned above or accelerated mobile pages.

So, did this help you answer your SEO equity questions?