In a marketplace that is only becoming increasingly reliant and centralised in the digital spaces of the internet, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) remains a critical component of any business’s marketing strategy.
But should your business invest in a one-off SEO setup or work in a continuing capacity with a digital marketing agency, via a monthly SEO service? In this blog, we’ll break down what to consider when faced with this dilemma.
Understanding SEO
SEO is the process of optimising a website and its digital content to improve visibility and ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs).
The goal of SEO is to increase organic, i.e., not paid for, traffic to a website by making it appear higher up in search engine rankings.
How SEO is carried out
There are three main pillars to a SEO campaign.
- Changes made ‘on-page’, i.e., to your website itself
- Changes made ‘off-page’, such as building in links and citations
- Technical changes, for example making the site mobile-friendly, speedier to load or improving indexing capabilities and search visibility
Within these categories, there are a variety of different strategies and techniques to improve a website’s ranking.
Incorporation of keywords
This refers to the use of identified terms and phrases that users are searching for in search engines and incorporating them naturally and strategically into the website’s content. These tend to change over time as user behaviour changes.
On-page and off-page techniques
There are quite a few elements that need to be monitored and updated regularly to maintain rankings as algorithms change and new competitors join the market. The tasks a digital agency would work on to improve SEO, include but aren’t limited to:
- Meta tags
- Meta descriptions
- Headings
- Images and alt text
- Content, such as blogs
- Technical updates
When it comes to off-page optimisation, building and managing backlinks to and from other reputable and authoritative websites builds credibility in the eyes of search engines’ algorithms, which is also only effective when being worked on consistently over a period of time. In fact, if backlinks and citations are built too quickly all at once and then aren’t continued to be built, search engines such as Google might flag your site for spam and it can negatively affect your rankings.
User Experience
Many technical SEO strategies serve one goal: improving the experience visitors have on your website. Google doesn’t just reward good content — it actively measures and ranks the quality of the experience your site delivers.
Core Web Vitals
Google’s official benchmarks for page experience, measuring load speed, visual stability, and interactivity. These are confirmed ranking factors — poor performance here is a direct ranking disadvantage, regardless of content quality.
Mobile-First Indexing
Google ranks your site based on its mobile version. If your site is difficult to use on a phone, it’s being assessed — and ranked — on that weaker experience.
Site Speed
Slow pages lose visitors before they engage. This signals to search engines that the page isn’t delivering value, compounding the ranking impact over time.
Intuitive Navigation
Clear structure helps both visitors and search engine crawlers find your content efficiently. Poor navigation buries important pages and reduces time spent on your site.
AI search
Search engines are no longer just ranking websites – they’re answering questions directly.
Google’s AI Overviews (previously known as Search Generative Experience, or SGE) now appear at the top of many search results pages, generating summarised answers pulled from across the web. For users, this means faster answers. For businesses, it means that even a first-page ranking no longer guarantees a click.
Studies conducted in 2024 found that pages appearing in AI Overview responses saw click-through rates drop by as much as 30–40% compared to traditional organic results – particularly for informational queries. This is a significant shift that a one-off SEO setup, completed even 12 months ago, simply would not account for.
What this means practically:
- Content that directly and clearly answers specific questions is more likely to be cited within AI Overviews, maintaining some visibility even without a click
- Thin, outdated, or generic content is increasingly likely to be bypassed entirely
- Google’s selection of AI Overview sources appears to favour content that demonstrates E-E-A-T — Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness
This isn’t limited to Google. AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot are capturing a growing share of search behaviour, particularly among younger demographics. Optimising for these platforms requires a different and evolving approach.
The implication for your SEO strategy is straightforward: the search landscape in 2026 looks fundamentally different to even two years ago. A website optimised once and left untouched is increasingly vulnerable – not just to competitor activity or algorithm changes, but to a structural shift in how search itself works.
Monthly SEO maintenance ensures your content strategy continuously adapts to these changes, keeping your business visible in an environment that no longer rewards a set-and-forget approach.
What Is E-E-A-T and Why Does It Matter?
Google doesn’t just evaluate what your website says — it evaluates whether your website can be trusted to say it.
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It’s the framework Google’s quality raters use to assess whether content genuinely serves the user, and it has become increasingly influential in how pages are ranked — particularly since Google’s Helpful Content updates rolled out from 2022 onwards.
Here’s what each component means in practice:
- Experience — Does the content reflect real, first-hand experience with the topic? A plumber writing about plumbing carries more weight than a generalist
- Expertise — Is the author knowledgeable in their field? Author credentials, qualifications, and depth of content all contribute
- Authoritativeness — Is your website recognised as a credible source within your industry? This is heavily influenced by who links to you and where your brand is mentioned online
- Trustworthiness — Does your site demonstrate transparency? This includes accurate information, clear ownership, secure browsing (HTTPS), and legitimate reviews
Why a one-off setup falls short here:
E-E-A-T isn’t a technical checkbox — it’s built over time. Backlinks from reputable sources accumulate gradually. A consistent content strategy demonstrates ongoing expertise. Reviews and brand mentions grow with active management.
A website that was set up once and left alone may have ticked the technical boxes at the time, but without continued effort, its perceived authority relative to actively maintained competitors will erode.
Monthly SEO maintenance directly supports E-E-A-T by consistently building the signals Google uses to determine whether your business deserves to rank.
Content creation
Content creation is about more than just volume. High quality, engaging and valuable content that is relevant and helpful for your target audience must also be optimised to rank above your competitors. But what does that actually look like in practice?
Match search intent
Content should be built around why someone is searching, not just what they’re searching for. A blog post targeting someone researching their options needs a different structure and tone than a service page targeting someone ready to buy. Mismatching intent is one of the most common reasons well-written content fails to rank.
Prioritise freshness
Search engines favour current, accurate content. Regularly updating and republishing existing content is often more efficient than creating new content from scratch, and can produce significant ranking improvements.
Structure for AI visibility
Clear headings, concise answers, and well-formatted lists help search engines understand and surface your content. This matters even more with AI Overviews — Google tends to pull from content that directly answers a specific question.
Build topical authority
Strategic content covers a topic cluster comprehensively rather than publishing in isolation. This breadth signals to Google that your website is a trustworthy resource — directly supporting E-E-A-T.
A one-off content setup captures a moment in time. Monthly maintenance ensures your content continues working for your business long after it’s published.
Monthly SEO maintenance service vs one-off SEO setup
Should your business engage an agency to provide ongoing SEO maintenance, or is a set-and-forget approach good enough?
What goes into an SEO set-up?
Let’s begin by explaining just some of the things that go into an initial SEO set-up for a website.
- Preparing a comprehensive SEO strategy
- Researching competitors in the market to learn what is best practice and what works
- Market research and keyword research to identify the best terms to target
- Technical and back-end coding changes to optimise a website, for example, creating a sitemap.xml file with all your website’s pages
- Setting up of reporting tools to keep track of SEO progress, such as Google Analytics and the general Google Search Console to monitor for any issues, this is in addition to paid tools that an agency would use
- Creation of online business listings, including but beyond just a Google Business Profile
- Rewriting of website content, including meta titles and descriptions, to ensure they will rank with the identified and chosen keywords
- Using high-quality and relevant images with alternative text descriptions
- Setting up SEO and website plugins to ensure your website is performing well enough to rank
- Finding high-quality third-party websites to create backlinks to your site
- Encouraging and managing online reviews
As you can see, a lot goes into the SEO setup above. Without a monthly SEO plan, asking your digital agency to complete these one-off tasks will quickly add up in cost, making it a very costly endeavour.
Keep in mind that any apps, plugins or tools used to monitor your site aren’t included in a once-off SEO setup which can be hundreds per month for you to purchase on your own. This doesn’t even include all the time, energy and years of experience an agency will use to help you achieve your digital marketing goals.
How long does SEO take to work?
This is a difficult question to answer for many reasons as it depends on the industry, but in general it can take a couple of months at least to get everything in place and for the algorithms of the search engines to begin picking up on the optimisation changes.
SEO should be thought of like more traditional forms of marketing. You can run a once-off advertisement campaign and see great results, but as the market shifts, competitors move in and the algorithms change (which they do up to 600 times a year!), your initial set-up may not prove as effective in the future.
The Benefits of Monthly SEO Maintenance
Due to the extensive nature of an initial SEO set-up, it may be wasted if that’s where you stop. Without having ongoing monthly SEO service to help spread out some of these activities in the long term, just paying for an initial set-up can prove least cost-efficient as well as provide a much lower return on investment.
Monthly SEO maintenance, at least for a period of six months, gives you the ability to achieve more value for every dollar you spend. How? Some tasks can be done at one time, but many other SEO strategies are about ongoing optimisation.
There are many factors that go into where your site sits in search engine rankings; One day you may be near the top and the next day you could drop significantly. Ongoing monthly SEO maintenance keeps track of the shifting tectonic plates of the digital marketing world and continuously updates backlinks, creates relevant content, fixes technical website issues that can occur over time, ensure speed times are not lagging and make sure that your website reflects the newest standards according to the recent algorithm changes.
If you’re looking for the most effective SEO service, monthly maintenance is the way to go.
GO Creative – premier SEO service providers
The GO Creative team is one of Brisbane’s leading specialists in website services. We have decades of experience helping businesses get the most out of their website.
But we understand how overwhelming getting started with SEO can be. That’s why we enjoy talking to each business owner to determine if SEO is the correct option for their business.
Book a free consultation today!
Are you still not sure whether monthly SEO maintenance service or a once-off SEO setup is right for you?
Why not book a free 15 minute consultation with a member of our team today? We’ll provide you with helpful, custom advice so you can make an informed decision.