Maintaining an SEO Baseline After Launch
Most small-business sites I build don't need an SEO agency. They need someone to do five or six unsexy things consistently. I run this list every few weeks on every site I maintain. It's not exhaustive — it's the floor.
1. Don't duplicate content
This is the one that sneaks up on people. A page that exists at three URLs (/services, /services/, and /?p=12) splits its own ranking signal three ways. I check the sitemap and Search Console for indexed duplicates every month and clean them up with canonical tags or 301 redirects.
2. Check every page has a unique title + meta description
A surprising number of small-business sites have 12 pages and 12 copies of the homepage <title>. I run a quick crawl with a free tool (Screaming Frog has a 500-URL free tier) and fix anything blank, generic, or duplicated. Titles under 60 characters, descriptions under 155 — including the business name + location + one specific service.
3. Verify the sitemap actually lists every page worth ranking
It's easy for a sitemap.xml to drift from reality after you add a page. I cross-check /sitemap.xml against the actual page list and resubmit in Search Console after any structural change.
4. Watch Core Web Vitals in Search Console
Once a month I open the Core Web Vitals report and check for new "Poor" or "Needs improvement" pages. The usual culprits: a giant new hero image that wasn't compressed, a third-party embed that blocks rendering, or a font load that introduced cumulative layout shift. Fix at the source.
5. Keep image alt text honest
When I onboard a site I do an alt-text pass — every meaningful image gets a description that says what's in it. After that, when a client adds new images through the CMS, I check that the alt fields aren't blank. Helps accessibility and helps search engines understand the image content.
6. Watch the 404s in Search Console
The "Not found (404)" report tells you what pages search engines or links think exist on your site. If something useful 404s, redirect it. If something useless 404s repeatedly, audit where the link is coming from — usually a stale citation on a directory site that's worth updating or claiming.
7. Google Business Profile is the other half of local SEO
For service businesses, half the work isn't even on the site. Reviews, photos, and the right primary category on Google Business Profile move the needle as much as anything I do on the site itself. I check it monthly.
That's the baseline. Each item is 5–15 minutes. The whole pass is well under an hour on a typical small-business site. The point isn't to chase rankings — it's to make sure the site doesn't quietly degrade while you're focused on your actual business.