That’s a very good question. Sometimes reaching the 1 position isn’t as difficult as maintaining it over the long term.
I’ll share from my own experience. I work in the casino niche, and the top 3 positions are constantly changing there.
To maintain a top 3 ranking, the first thing we do is closely monitor competitors. This is a critical aspect. We analyze their backlinks - how many they’re building, on which websites, whether a new 301 redirect has appeared pointing to that page, or if they’ve secured a homepage link that could pass significant authority.
Tracking this is essential to understand whether we’re falling behind and risk being overtaken, or whether everything is stable and we can continue improving the page as planned.
From a foundational standpoint, you should always keep building links. They should grow steadily and as naturally as possible. Social signals also matter - they should send positive trust signals. And one of the most important factors, which is often overlooked, is user behavior.
If your page ranks #1 for a query, it means it must fully satisfy user intent. It should answer all questions, be convenient, fast, and well-structured. You should continuously monitor content quality and relevance. Otherwise, users will return to search results, creating negative behavioral signals - and that’s a strong indication to Google that the content isn’t good enough.