The next steps

Resources for SEO industry news

With so many things changing, you have to keep abreast of changes to ensure your website retains its high rankings. Since search engines don’t provide much information about how their proprietary algorithms work, one of the best ways to do this is to watch the industry experts who try to decode the changes and provide advice on best practices. There are hundreds of SEO blogs and websites, but for your continuing SEO education, here are some of the ones you should watch closely:

Ask for help when you need it

I think it’s essential for any modern marketing department or entrepreneur to have an in-depth and up to date knowledge of the best practices to build their online presence. Unlike many other services a business would use, such as legal or accounting, most companies should use SEO consultants to grow their own knowledge and steer their own online marketing plans. In other words, using an SEO professional should not be an excuse to hand off all the work – it should be a partnership to help improve your business’ skills internally, and provide assistance where needed.

At the same time, keeping everything in-house won’t lead to the best results in the long term – SEO strategies are fast changing, and there’s considerable time and effort in maintaining and building a web presence. There are times when you will want and need to get outside help in bringing your SEO efforts back on track, marketing for a particular campaign, or just dealing with resource constraints.

There are many SEO companies out there, some of which are world-class and others of which are not so good. When you hire experts to help out with your SEO, do your homework to make sure your existing effort will not be squandered – it’s easier to go backwards in search engine rankings than forwards, and undoing mistakes can take considerable time.

In the book, we discuss how to hire an SEO consultancy, questions you should ask and potential red flags.