Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t dead — in fact, it has a stronger heartbeat than most of the other strategies that your friendly neighborhood web design firm uses to optimize your site.

Creating a website serves as step one in the online marketing process. The second step is to ensure that prospective customers can find your site. This is where SEO excels.

Update your methods and technology

While SEO hasn’t diminished in importance over the years, its role in web design continues to evolve. Even if your SEO strategy is just a year or two old, you’re behind the times. To catch up, work with your web design firm to implement updated SEO technologies and strategies.

For example, a custom CMS (content management system) lets you create the best SEO setup for your business. You can also modify the back end of the CMS anytime to keep up with changes in the industry. If you’re using WordPress as your CMS, look into plugins (or update the ones you have), like Yoast SEO and the All in One SEO Pack. You can also choose to buy the premium versions of these plugins for extra features.

Google dislikes dead links because they hurt usability. Users get annoyed when every click brings up that annoying 404 page, so if your site has dead links, you’ll see its ranking plummet in the SERPs (search engine results pages). However, if you fix those dead links, you can expect to see an improvement in your rankings.

A dead link is a link that no longer takes visitors to the original page. The author might have removed that one page or disabled the entire site. Whatever the case, you must snip them out of your content to avoid SEO penalties.

If you’re using WordPress, consider installing a plugin like the Broken Link Checker. Plugins won’t find every instance of dead links, but they’re an excellent start. You can also use Google Analytics. When the spider encounters a dead link, you’ll receive a notification.

Refresh old content

Maybe you wrote a post a year ago or even 10 years ago that still attracts steady traffic from the search engines. Or perhaps you published a post two years ago that never gained much traction. SEO doesn’t always involve creating new content. You can refresh old content with better information, updated news, or extra materials to generate traffic.

Brian Dean of Backlinko tried this strategy and boosted traffic to one of his older blog posts by more than 111 percent. If you promote that content through your email list and social media platforms, you’ll gain even more eyes on the page.

When you need brilliant SEO strategies like these, your web design firm can swoop in like a superhero and help you rank better in the search engines.

Another effective method is using the growth-driven website design approach to keep your site consistently fresh and up to date. Download the free Growth-Driven Design Playbook to see how this innovative process can improve your SEO, website performance, and overall design.

This article originally appeared on the Inbound 281 blog and is republished with permission.