If you’ve been told that SEO in 2025 is dead, think again. Just look at the above chart to see the year when impressions increased (hint, it’s 2025)!
As a marketing agency, we believe there’s no better way to understand SEO, particularly technical SEO and content marketing, than by tracking real-world data. Far too often, industry advice jumps from A to B or makes assumptions without providing evidence. In this article, we clear the air and walk you through our own SEO experience:
- What happened when nothing was done?
- The changes that were made.
- The results that followed.
Let’s begin by looking at what happens when you don’t actively manage your SEO. Below, we will review a year’s worth of masked data so that you can visualize the effects of SEO:
SEO Neglect: It’s More Common Than You Think
For years, they maintained good on-page content but did nothing else: no link building, no SEO maintenance, or no technical audits. This situation is common among small businesses, where they launch their site, see a brief bump in traffic, then flatline.
When that happens, your digital reach becomes limited to branded searches. Everything else, such as non-branded keywords, long-tail queries, and competitive topics, falls off the map. In our example, impressions didn’t grow, and Google stopped rewarding the site with visibility.
Key takeaways: Search engines deprioritize inactive websites. Your reach and traffic will stagnate if you’re not actively working on SEO.
1. Planning and Strategy for a Killer SEO Program
Not identified in the above diagram was a comprehensive SEO audit to kickstart this whole process. It revealed numerous site errors and the lack of content depth. If you’re unsure where to begin, an SEO audit is essential because it gives you a map of what’s broken and what needs prioritized.
As we dove deeper into the site, we uncovered more technical SEO issues that had been silently impacting performance. The first was to address redirects.
2. Let’s Fix Redirects (Part 1)
Arguably, the biggest issue was the existence of multiple versions of the site:
- A direct IP address
- A staging subdomain
- An HTTP version
- A traling slash
The issue? Search engines split the site’s SEO across multiple URLs. Pages weren’t consolidated under a single domain, which meant no one version received the full SEO value.
To fix this, we implemented server redirects, 301 redirects, and updated canonical URLs to consolidate everything under the primary domain:
IPs, subdomains, HTTP, and trailing slash all point to https://domain.com
The impact: 100% increase in impressions.
Lesson learned: Never allow duplicate site versions to coexist. Redirect them and ensure one clean, secure domain is used across the web.
3. Cleaning Up Indexing Errors
Once redirects were in place, we noticed indexing issues plaguing their site. Google Search Console identified several problems:
- 404 errors: Pages that needed proper redirects.
- Duplicate content: Incorrect or missing canonical tags.
- Discovered but not indexed: Thin or low-quality pages requiring content improvements.
- Redirect errors: Pages pointing to broken or non-existent destinations.
We used technical SEO tools, Moz and Semrush to monitor, fix, and resubmit the affected pages.
The impact: 100% increase in impressions.
Lesson learned: Indexing issues can quietly prevent important pages from showing up in search. Fix them before focusing on publishing new content.
4. Kickoff Content Marketing (Part 1)
With technical SEO under control, we turned to content marketing. For several months heading into 2025, we consistently published at least one high-quality article each week, targeting relevant keywords and user intent.
The results? Impressions really started to climb. The consistent publishing rhythm fueled organic growth across a wide range of long-tail queries. Note, we noticed that Google indexing results took about 3 months to propagate, which is fairly standard.
The impact: 400% increase in impressions.
Lesson learned: Compared to technical SEO fixes, content creation is a better driver for growth. Additionally, sitting still won’t increase search visibility
5. Let’s Fix on Redirects (Part 2)
Despite our earlier fixes, different indexing problems emerged:
- The IP address was still indexed. We scanned all of their links and noticed a few deprecated links (links that are no longer in use). Then we updated all internal links and canonical references to remove any trace of them.
- The staging site had accidentally been indexed. We corrected the meta directives to noindex, nofollow on staging pages.
Once these were corrected, only a single, consistent domain appeared in search results, which is exactly how it should be!
The impact: 200% increase in impressions.
Lesson learned: Continuously monitor Google Search Console and confirm that only the correct domain is being indexed.
6. Content Marketing (Part 2)
We doubled down on content marketing again. The commitment to consistent, high-value publishing paid off when we switched to releasing 3+ articles each week. In just a few months, organic impressions skyrocketed!
The impact: 300% increase in impressions.
Lesson learned: SEO rewards persistence. Regularly updated, well-structured content is key to long-term success.
7. Fixing Pagination
One day, we noticed a sudden drop in impressions. Upon investigation, we found that older articles were no longer accessible due to broken pagination in our article archive pages.
When paginated links are missing or broken, it can “orphan” older posts, making them impossible for search engine crawlers to find. Additionally, broken pagination can introduce issues with the indexing of articles, even if they have proper internal links. Trust us, we can confirm this in Google Search Console inspection.
We followed pagination best practices by fixing the pagination and resubmitting the sitemap.
The impact: Impressions went back to their previous levels.
Lesson learned: Ensure all content remains accessible to crawlers. Pagination is a critical piece of your site’s information architecture, so make sure it works.
8. Ongoing Content Marketing
This is the current snapshot of where we are with the SEO program. We know things are working, and we are continuing our aggressive content marketing campaign.
Our Guiding Light:
Impressions are up 5,000% over a span of a year! We couldn’t be more thrilled about this.
The Bottom Line / TLDR
SEO is very alive and well.
If you neglect your site, it will stagnate or may even decline. But results will surely follow when you address technical SEO issues, clean up indexing, and invest in content marketing.
Here’s what you should take away from our analysis:
- Start with a comprehensive SEO audit
- Fix redirects and eliminate duplicate domains
- Resolve indexing issues via Google Search Console
- Build and execute a consistent content marketing strategy
- Ensure paginated content remains crawlable
- Monitor results and stay persistent
Whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, the formula is still the same. SEO in 2025 is alive, evolving, and still one of the most effective long-term growth strategies. That’s if you’re willing to do the work.
Otherwise, contact an SEO expert like Uplancer for a free consultation and audit of your website today!
