To stay up to date on SEO trends, there are a few other things you should do to make sure you have the latest SEO information at your fingertips. Here’s a process you can follow to remain in-the-know.
1) Create a stream on Twitter
Twitter’s great for fast, real-time news, so to get started, create a stream on Twitter of some terms that are related to SEO. Use terms including “Google algorithm,” “Google Panda,” “Google Hummingbird,” or “Google Penguin.” You could choose to use terms like “SEO” and “search engine optimization,” but you’ll most likely get over whelmed by the flood of tweets coming in. So it is recommended to keep it specific and simple.
2) Subscribe to SEO blogs
Whenever there is a major SEO change, SEO blogs light up with informational content that helps the rest of the world make sense of it all. Set up your RSS feed — or subscribe via email — to make sure you don’t miss anything. You may see some articles that delve too much in the nitty gritty for your taste, but that’s alright — ignore those, and just focus on the posts that let you know about new trends and recent updates that impact how you do your job.
If you want to take this a step further, set up a Google Alert for some of the same SEO terms that you used to create your Twitter stream. This will ensure that you find out either immediately, daily, or weekly, depending on your preferences.
3) Stay up to date with Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools aren’t just a way for people to make sure their sites are properly optimized. Yes, it does that, but it also has a series of resources that explain SEO best practices to you. You can find out information about SEO, how Google crawls your site, and much more.
Google Webmaster Tools can also provide detailed information about your site’s performance, including your search queries, internal links, keywords you rank for, and more.
4) Put 15-30 minutes aside each week to learn
If you really want to stay in the “know” about everything SEO, it’s important to put some time aside to actively consume the information. If you have more than 15-30 minutes a week to do so, that’s great, but a weekly check-in should help you stay relatively current.
5) Use HubSpot’s SEO panel
If you’re a HubSpot customer using the COS blog, you may have seen a recent addition to your blogging tool — the SEO panel — which gives you actionable advice on how to optimize your blog content. The beauty of this panel is that as SEO updates are made, the SEO panel will be updated to reflect the most up-to-date information about how to optimize your content for SEO.
All of the information you learn about SEO and the newest trends is built into the panel to help you stay up to date every single day. You will see a list of actionable tips, linking recommendations, even call-to-action suggestions to help improve your conversion rate.
6) Join SEO-focused LinkedIn Groups
There are tons of resources, articles, and discussions for anyone looking for help with SEO, so you can be sure you’ll hear about big updates there. Even better, you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions and engage with other people who are interested in the updates and know a lot about SEO Trends.