Either way, you now proudly sit at the top of the search engine results for your chosen keywords!

So now that you're number one, you can sit back, relax and enjoy months of great positioning, right? Wrong! The effort it took to get your Website to the top position is nothing compared to the effort needed to keep it there.

Back when your site wallowed in search engine obscurity, none of your competitors worried about who you were, or what you did. But your rapid rise to the top of the search engine results has stirred the vipers' nest -- and now, your competitors are rattled! You can bet your life they'll come after you with a vengeance.

Your competitors are likely to be hurting, both emotionally and financially. They're going to want their #1 position back -- and quickly! More than likely, they'll curse themselves for becoming complacent, and seek professional assistance to find out why they dropped down the rankings, and how the situation can be fixed. Whatever the case, they'll be working hard to ensure that the coveted #1 spot they once held is again in their possession.

A Checklist for Continued Success

Maintaining the top position once your competitors know who you are is a very time consuming and difficult job: sneaking ahead of the pack is easy when compared with ensuring that your site stays at the top of the search results. Maintaining that great level of exposure is going to take a lot of diligence and constant monitoring on your part.

In fact, there are things that you will need to do on a daily, weekly and monthly basis to ensure that your site stays put. These three checklists should keep you busy -- but I think you'll agree it's worth the effort if it means you can hang onto top ranking.

DAILY CHECKLIST

Check Your Uptime

Make sure your Website is up and running 24/7. Nothing would be worse than your site displaying a "404 error" just as Google decides to drop in for a little spidering. If your site is down, even for only a few hours, you may lose your hold on the top position. If you don't have time to monitor it yourself, InternetSeer offers a free site monitoring service that alerts you if your site goes down.

Make Daily Changes Strategically Consistent

Is your company using any of the Paid Inclusion services? If so, your website could be re-indexed as quickly as every 48 hours. With this in mind, any changes that you make to your site today, could affect your rankings tomorrow. Make sure that your website is consistent. I know of one company offering Japanese Hotels who removed the word "hotels" from all of their links and dropped from #5 positioning to #92!

Capitalize On Trends

Review your site logs or statistics counter. If you don't already have a site statistics package on your Web server, then head on over to WebTrends and get their statistics package. It's imperative that you know who visits you, how long they stay, and which search engine brings them there. By checking this daily or every second day, you can note any trends as they begin to form, and be in a better position to capitalize on them.

Keep An Eye On PPC Bids

If you use Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search engines, make sure you keep tabs on your bids. In the blink of an eye, you could be paying too much (or too little) for your clickthroughs. In addition, learn to spot those fake clickthroughs. With your statistics package in place, you'll easily be able to tell if you receive repeated clicks from the same IP address.

WEEKLY CHECKLIST

Check Your Rankings

It's important to check your search engine rankings at least weekly. Some of you may wish to check on a more frequent basis, while others can stretch it to every couple of weeks. Whatever the case, the important thing is to check them! The most popular and reliable ranking report software is available with WebPosition Gold. Using this software, you can track your own site's position, and keep an eye on competitors. One word of advice: Google has publicly stated that they will penalize anyone that repeatedly uses automated reporting software to check their rankings on the engine. To avoid problems, you can either check your Google rankings only when an update occurs (usually in the first week of the month) or check them manually as often as you want.

Read Your Subscriptions Subscribe to the many weekly search engine newsletters that are out there. SitePoint Tribune and SearchDay are both great resources with updates and news on search engine developments. Make sure you take time out to read them.

Keep Up To Date With SE News Sites

Read the many articles and news available on respected search engine sites such as Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Guide and Promotion Base.

Visit Your Competitors

Visit the Websites of your biggest competitors and check for any dramatic changes they may have made to their content. View their source code from your browser and keep an eye on their Meta tags. A change in the content of their Meta tags is usually the first sign that your competitor is trying to out-position you.