A case study in the need for optimisation

Search engine optimisation, is there ever a time when you can rest on your laurels and breath a winning sigh?

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is like training to be a top athlete.

To be the best you need to work hard to beat everyone else on the track. Once you are number one you may feel you can relax, however as soon as you do your rivals catch up and eventually you get left behind.

This is the same for your website. Some companies may feel that once we have got their pages to the number one spot for the specific keyword searches we are no longer needed. Here is an example of what can happen if a company decides to look after their own search engine optimisation without the help of experienced professionals.

• 2002 - A nationally respected health care and rehabilitation centre signed up for a new site and maintenance program - including SEO
• 2002-2004 - The site was ranked between 1 and 5 for all their key phrases in Google
• 2005 - The site was consistantly ranked number 1 across the board
• June 2005 - The company decided to leave our maintenance program and move their web site and SEO to their hardware supplier.
• August 2005 - The site goes from number 1 to being at the bottom of the second page at number 20, in a search for 'drug rehabilitation'. In a search for 'alcohol dependency' the site dropped 17 places from 3rd to 20th.
• September 2006 - the new site went live, updateable by a content management system. We expect further decline in search engine rankings because of this.
• October 2006 - The client emailed us asking if we could help get them back to the top of the search engines. We'll have a tough job as the new site has been created by a company with very limited understanding of search engine optimisation.
• November 2006 - Sadly our prediction of further falls came true quicker than expected - 'drug rehabilitation' is now at number 218 in Google whilst 'alcohol dependency' has dropped to page eight in the results.

Below is a graph showing the ranking of the site in a Google search for 'drug rehabilitation' from January 2006, when the site was still benefitting from our optimisation, until September 2006. The company has recently moved their site to a Content Management System, so we are expecting further rapid decline..

Do you still think you no longer need search engine optimisation?