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SEO trends change constantly. Whether you’re a small business owner, a non-profit manager, or a member of a team within a\u00a0large business, it can be difficult to stay on top of best practices. Search engines are constantly updating the rules they use to prioritize search results for users.\u00a0Website technologies constantly change, as well, but not always in ways that favor SEO. What is effective one year might kill your rankings next year.<\/p>\n
How do you keep track of it all?<\/p>\n
The Necessity of Staying on Top of SEO Trends<\/h3>\n
Though difficult to do, staying on top of SEO trends is essential if you care about your website’s search presence. As we like to tell clients: a website without effective SEO might as well be a billboard. Only people who know exactly where it is will be able to find it.<\/p>\n
Like most elements of digital marketing, SEO is also part art and part science.<\/p>\n
The science part of SEO:<\/strong><\/p>\n The art part of SEO:<\/strong><\/p>\n Though we can’t teach you how to accomplish those four things in one post, what we can do is give you some tips for keeping on top of SEO trends, so that you aren’t left scratching your head as to why your competition is ranking better than you.<\/p>\n According to Forbes<\/a>:<\/p>\n A thought leader is an individual or firm that prospects, clients, referral sources, intermediaries and even competitors recognize as one of the foremost authorities in selected areas of specialization, resulting in its being the go-to individual or organization for said expertise.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What we like about this definition is that it shows that recognition\u00a0<\/em>is key to who is considered a thought leader. You need to decide who you\u00a0<\/em>recognize as an SEO thought leader. You need to decide who you recognize as someone who can help you solve problems.<\/p>\n This can include:<\/p>\n This can also be very hard to do with SEO, however. SEO trends change so rapidly that it’s easy to get bamboozled by someone who sounds like they know what they’re talking about. Books are typically not a good source of\u00a0SEO knowledge, because as soon as they’re printed, they’re outdated. They can certainly get you started by introducing you to some best practices\u00a0and basic concepts however.<\/p>\n To help you\u00a0get started, here are some of our favorite SEO thought leaders:<\/strong><\/p>\n Here are our two favorite introductory guides to SEO:<\/strong><\/p>\n Perhaps more than any other element of digital marketing, SEO is a highly technical field that can be difficult to break into. A little knowledge is also not enough\u00a0to be effective at SEO. You need to be doing things the right way from the beginning or you will run into trouble later on. Or worse: you will completely waste your efforts or even harm your search presence.<\/p>\n Good tools can give you concrete recommendations as you build a website, optimize an existing website, or start a new content marketing campaign. The problem, of course, is that there are a range of tools out there. We can’t tell you which ones to avoid, because we don’t believe in negative marketing.<\/p>\n But we will<\/em> say: be skeptical. If a tool promises to make you the top Google search result for only $19.99, it’s probably not really going to do that.<\/p>\n To help you get started, here are some of our favorite SEO tools:<\/strong><\/p>\n If you are starting completely from scratch with no knowledge of SEO, it is probably worth your time and money to hire a reputable SEO consultant to help you build your first campaign.<\/p>\n SEO consultants can typically do several things for you:<\/p>\n What you should look for in an agency:<\/strong><\/p>\n We cannot over-emphasize point three. We get a lot of clients who have been paying a web developer thousands of dollars a month for miscellaneous SEO services, and who have never seen a single analytics report. If you aren’t seeing data, how do you know that your SEO consultant is improving your search presence?<\/p>\n Unlike other elements of digital marketing, like content development or ad creation: SEO really is a simple set of rules that you need to adhere to. Again, how you leverage those rules to create compelling, optimized content is where the art of SEO comes in.<\/p>\n If you’re not following the basic rules, however, you’re stabbing in the dark.<\/p>\n SEO trends change constantly. Whether you’re a small business owner, a non-profit manager, or a member of a team within a\u00a0large business, it can be difficult to stay on top of best practices. Search engines are constantly updating the rules they use to prioritize search results for users.\u00a0Website technologies constantly change, as well, but not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"3 Tips for Keeping on Top of SEO Trends","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,13,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digital-marketing","category-seo","category-trends","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5lzBX-1Ak","builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contentgarden.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contentgarden.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contentgarden.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contentgarden.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contentgarden.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6096"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.contentgarden.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7877,"href":"https:\/\/www.contentgarden.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6096\/revisions\/7877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contentgarden.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contentgarden.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contentgarden.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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Tip #1: Find SEO Thought Leaders You Trust and Follow Their Lead<\/h3>\n
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Tip #2: Use SEO Tools to Help You With Best Practices<\/h3>\n
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Tip #3: Hire an (Affordable)\u00a0SEO Agency<\/h3>\n
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Just Remember:\u00a0With SEO There Really Is One Right Way<\/h3>\n
Need Help With SEO?<\/h3>\nGet a Free 30-Minute Consultation<\/a>\n\n