13 Effective Strategies to Stay Updated With Constantly Changing SEO Trends
To navigate the dynamic landscape of SEO, we’ve gathered thirteen insights from industry leaders, including founders and SEO specialists. From subscribing to SEO YouTube channels to contributing to open-source SEO projects, these seasoned professionals share their top strategies for staying ahead in the ever-evolving world of search engine optimization.
- Subscribe to SEO YouTube Channels
- Follow LinkedIn SEO Experts
- Track Industry Leaders’ Insights
- Join Online SEO Communities
- Conduct SEO Experiments
- Optimize Core Web Vitals
- Remember SEO’s Core Principle
- Adhere to Google’s E-A-T Guidelines
- Diversify Content for SERP Features
- Create Original Content
- Network with Marketing Coffee Bot
- Analyze Competitors’ SEO Strategies
- Contribute to Open-Source SEO Projects
Subscribe to SEO YouTube Channels
YouTube is full of helpful resources to stay on top of ever-changing SEO trends. There are a lot of YouTubers, big and small, that test SEO strategies in real-time and report back to the community.
By tracking numerous YouTube channels, you can also understand the difference between overall trends and an isolated occurrence.
Some YouTube channels focused on SEO worth following are Matt Diggity, Authority Hackers, Income School, and small channels like SEO Truths and Jaume Ros.
Germaine Muller
Founder and Managing Director, Futuretheory
Follow LinkedIn SEO Experts
There are so many great SEO creators out there on LinkedIn—Andrew Holland, Daniel Foley Carter, and Rebekah Edwards, to name a few.
Following a handful of these experts and keeping an eye on their posts can be incredibly beneficial. They produce a significant amount of content, which means they’re constantly up to date with the latest trends and changes. This is particularly valuable when it comes to Google updates and developments with AI, which can be time-consuming to track independently.
By following these creators, you can quickly absorb and implement any current insights they share, engage with their content, or save it for future reference. Plus, this approach allows you to stay informed without overwhelming your inbox or sifting through a vast amount of articles.
David Begazo
SEO Specialist, Agency Elevation
Track Industry Leaders’ Insights
Follow industry leaders like SEMrush, Ahrefs, SEJ, and personalities like Brian Dean & Neil Patel. They all live and breathe SEO; if anything is changing that’s worth knowing, they will write about it.
Also, follow Google, watch their keynotes, and pay attention to their product launches because something that might become part of the search could begin as another product.
Adam Haworth
Founder, Contactora
Join Online SEO Communities
Google releases thousands of algorithm updates every year but only publicly discloses major ones, like Broad Core Updates and Helpful Content Updates. These updates lead to a frequent surge of new trends. The best way to stay on top of all these changes is to get involved in the SEO community. LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), and Facebook all have thriving SEO communities to share ideas, questions, and thoughts about Google’s many changes and trends.
All levels of expertise can be found in these communities, and there are typically niche groups that cater to specific types of SEO—like local, enterprise, or technical. Staying up-to-date on industry news and monitoring what industry peers are saying is a great way to keep up with the latest trends.
Katie Stone
SEO Lead, Leadhub
Conduct SEO Experiments
Practical SEO experimentation is the cornerstone of our approach at Promodo. By drawing on ideas from public case studies, expert forums, and industry conferences, we create a backlog for SEO testing.
With a diverse portfolio of clients and numerous projects, we have the unique opportunity to conduct multiple experiments concurrently. These experiments allow us to test new strategies and techniques in real-world scenarios, often yielding surprising and invaluable results.
Our hands-on approach ensures that our clients experience the best outcomes directly. Through continuous experimentation, we not only enhance our tactics but also provide our clients with the latest SEO practices customized to their specific needs. This process fosters mutual growth—a win-win situation.
Valerie Lavska
CMO, Promodo
Optimize Core Web Vitals
Increasing user experience through core web vitals is essential for achieving higher rankings. It’s important to pay attention to these metrics, especially since Google updates their core web vitals annually, tweaking the evaluation of user experience. The next update is set for March 2024.
Interaction to Next Paint (INP) will be a game-changer in the upcoming change. INP measures the rate at which a webpage responds to user interaction, helping to understand how quickly users can interact with a web page.
A key factor in improving the INP score is to stay persistent in optimizing INP. One way to reduce the INP score is by avoiding large, complicated layouts, which can affect the speed of user reactions. The best solution is to simplify layouts wherever possible. The lower the INP rate, the more fluid the user interactions will be.
Amit Raj
Founder, The Links Guy
Remember SEO’s Core Principle
My best tip is to always keep in mind one thing:
All SEO trends will never change one fundamental thing: The search engine (be it Google, YouTube, Amazon, etc.) will always want to provide the user with the BEST match to what they’re searching for.
It’s very easy and common to forget that point and get carried away with every new trend that comes. Of course, it’s important to always stay updated, and it can help a lot, but only if you remember your basic goal: create content that solves the user’s problem the best.
Another thing is that SEO trends can be a major distraction for some SEOs, so another cool tip is to choose carefully who to follow on YouTube. This can cut out a lot of the fluff and help you focus on getting things done, rather than listening to the endless opinions of everyone.
I follow Ahrefs, Matt Diggity, and Authority Hacker.
Avraham Badush
Marketing Director, EZ Cleanup
Adhere to Google’s E-A-T Guidelines
An effective approach involves adhering to Google’s guidelines. Continuously create content that prioritizes user needs by following the E-A-T guidelines. Focus on on-page optimization and develop a link-building strategy centered on enhancing brand awareness. These actions can enhance rankings despite the ever-changing landscape of SEO trends.
Mei Ping Mak
Director of SEO and Web, Weave Asia
Diversify Content for SERP Features
One of the most effective tactics you can employ is diversifying your content types. It’s increasingly important to ensure that your site is prepared to leverage SERP features such as knowledge graphs, videos, and expanded snippets, since these are becoming more widely used by search engines.
By successfully optimizing for these SERP features, you can capitalize on higher visibility and significantly grow organic traffic. Of course, this requires a degree of specialized technical expertise and an understanding of both traditional SEO practices, like keyword research, and out-of-the-box strategies, like schema markup implementation.
Justin Cole
President and SEO Strategist, Tested Media
Create Original Content
Writing original content will always keep you ahead of all the AI websites and constantly changing search algorithms.
Google wants to see new content, and AI can “only” summarize what is already out there, which means AI is not bringing new content to the table.
Every time you’re about to write a content piece, analyze the SERP and then ask yourself: “How can I bring my unique perspective into play here to stand out?”
Often, you can run an experiment or gather data and use that as the common thread throughout your blog post or article.
Being unique through data or experiments also naturally brings links to your website because your blog post is the only one of its kind, so people want to reference it and link to it naturally. It’s a win-win.
That’s how you keep up with the constantly changing SEO trends.
Phillip Stemann
SEO Enthusiast, Phillip Stemann
Network with Marketing Coffee Bot
While checking LinkedIn for updates is a basic option, I’ve taken a more innovative approach. I created a “Marketing Coffee” bot that randomly matches marketing professionals in my city.
Each week, it pairs two people and asks if they’d like to meet. If both agree, they share their experiences and insights about current marketing and SEO trends. This method has provided me with more practical knowledge about SEO than reading thousands of blogs ever could. Real people sharing real practices and successes offer invaluable insights that are far more relevant and applicable to the ever-evolving world of SEO.
Andriy Zapisotskyi
CEO and Founder, GrowthMate
Analyze Competitors’ SEO Strategies
One of our standard practices to stay on top of the constantly changing SEO landscape is to keep a careful eye on what our competitors are doing. We keep careful track of the websites of several of our competitors in the moving space to get ideas for landing pages, outreach techniques, and engaging content that leads to better conversion rates.
It’s important to mix this with our own innovation, or all we’ll ever do is try to catch up to our competitors, but this approach does make them do a lot of the work for us.
Nick Valentino
VP of Market Operations, Bellhop
Contribute to Open-Source SEO Projects
Personally, what I do is get involved in open-source collaborative SEO projects. I find this a great way to diversify my professional network in the digital marketing space and keep up with the latest SEO trends.
Open-source projects are where the source code is open for anyone to see, change, and share. As you get better at your skills, it’s really valuable to take part in these projects. Working on open-source allows people with varied backgrounds and experiences to collaborate on a shared goal, fostering teamwork and a community feeling. In my experience, this kind of collaboration often speeds up innovation and development since everyone can add to and improve upon each other’s ideas and solutions.
Open-source SEO projects are usually run by large groups of volunteers who really care about the work. By contributing, you’re part of creating SEO tools and digital marketing software that’s high-quality and reliable because it’s tested and reviewed by many different people. I recommend starting to contribute to open-source SEO projects on websites like GitHub, Bitbucket, and Launchpad.
Alan Redondo
Founder, Ardoz Digital
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