Stay Informed

The SEO industry is dynamic and always changing. While the fundamentals rarely change, it’s important to stay engaged in the industry.

For general news and algorithm updates, read Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Roundtable.

I also recommend that focus most of your learning time reading top SEO blogs. Don’t just focus on blogs that align with your particular SEO philosophy either. You can learn from the whitest of white hat SEO or the blackest of black hat SEOs. There is no “right” or “wrong” way of doing SEO. White, grey, and black hat SEO are all trying to achieve the same thing. You can learn from everyone.

With that out of the way, I’m going to show you a few blogs that I recommend. Digest, study, and take action on their content.

I recommend you subscribe to the blogs I’m about to list on Feedly.

And also get in habit of capturing good content using Pocket.

Nathan Gotch
Nathan GotchYou knew a shameless plug was coming. All the content on my SEO blog is the product of experience, testing, and from what you ask for.

Our intention with every single piece of content is to improve your life in one way or another. I’m also an SEO consultant, so make sure you reach out if you need some help.

If you’re new here, then start with these guides:

How to Build Backlinks in 2017
Anchor Text: The Definitive Guide
SEO Audit Checklist for 2017
Brian Dean
Brian DeanI’ve learned an incredible amount from Brian and I highly recommend you read everything he puts out.

Brian’s content is so good that it forces every blogger to step up their game.

Here are some of my favorite pieces of content from Brian:

The Definitive Guide to Guest Blogging
Link Building Case Study: How I Increased My Search Traffic by 110% in 14 Days
How To Boost Conversions by 785% in One Day (The Content Upgrade)
Notice that Brian doesn’t publish new content often. It’s not because he’s lazy. It’s because Brian put his effort into promoting and improving his content assets. Analyze how he operates his own blog. Do so and it almost guarantees that you will improve your content creation ability.

Glen Allsopp
Glen AllsoppGlen’s SEO philosophy is a perfect balance between grey and white hat SEO.

Although he advocates PBNs (a grey hat tactic), Glen also promotes the importance of creating valuable content.

Here are a few of my favorite articles from Glen:

13 Advanced Link Building Strategies You (Probably) Haven’t Used
How 16 Companies are Dominating the World’s Google Search Results
51 Profitable SEO Niches to Dominate with Low Competition
Analyze the way Glen creates content. His headlines are powerful and he leverages the concept of “length implies strength”.

Neil Patel
Neil PatelNeil is the king of content-driven SEO. Although his focus is now on digital marketing as a whole, he still drops SEO knowledge bombs on the regular. Keep tabs on him and don’t just read his content… Watch how he creates content and try to learn from everything he does.

Here are some of my favorites from Neil:

How To Generate 20,000 Monthly Visitors Through Long-Tail Search
How to Build High Quality Backlinks in a Scalable Way
How to Drive More Repeat Visitors Through SEO: What We Learned by Analyzing 114,871 Keywords
Ross Hudgens
Ross HudgensIf you are looking for high-level thinking and SEO content, then Ross is your person. His content forces you to elevate your game and think big picture.

It’s impossible to read Ross’s content and not get better at SEO and business.

I get a ton of value from all Ross’s content, but here are a few of my favorites:

Content Marketing in Boring Industries
13 Actionable SEO Tips You Can Use Today
The Advanced Guide to Content Curation
Ryan Stewart
Ryan StewartRyan is a master of outreach, relationship building, and link acquisition. I also recommend Ryan’s work because he is systems and data driven.

If you run an agency, analyze Ryan’s every move because you will learn a lot.

Here’s some great content from Ryan:

Taking a New Site from 0 – 15k Organic Visits in 30 Days
How We Drove $182,324.83 in Sales With Facebook Ads
How to Use “Topical Research” for Explosive SEO Growth
Matthew Barby
Matthew BarbyMatthew is a master of enterprise-level SEO. His content is data-driven and always actionable.

His blog is a good place to start, but he also publishes some awesome guest posts as well.

Check out some of my favorite content from Matthew:

21 Customer Acquisition Strategies to Win New Customers
19 Actionable SEO Tips to Increase Organic Traffic
Zero to One Million: an SEO Campaign Blueprint
Matt Diggity
Matt Diggity

Matt lives and breathes affiliate SEO. If you want to take the affiliate path, you need to be reading his blog.

And if you aren’t, you should still read Matt’s blog because he produces excellent data-driven content.

Here is some of my favorite content from Matt:

How You Should Start Choosing Anchor Text. Starting NOW – this is a good alternative anchor text strategy to test. There are some issues with copying competitor’s anchor text profiles, but I’ll save that debate for another time. 🙂
How to Boost your PBNs with Topical Relevance
The REAL Reason Why Your Backlinks Don’t Work
Jason Acidre
Jason AcidreJason is one of the best link builders on the planet. His strategies are data-driven, intricate, and actionable.

Read everything Jason’s publishes and you will get better at SEO.

Here are a few of my favorite guides:

100+ Advanced Online Marketing & SEO Strategies: Guides & Tutorials
Ultimate Guide to Link Building with Images
How I increased my blog’s Search Traffic by 44% in under a month
One last important point about your attitude as you get better:

Don’t Get Cocky
It is critical that you stay humble. Even when you have mastered the art of driving organic search traffic, you should still act like you know nothing. Never stop learning and growing. There is no “end” you’re going to reach in your skill progression. There is always room to improve.

Be Patient
You don’t become an expert in anything overnight. Becoming an SEO expert is a marathon, not a sprint. Put in the work every day and try to be better than you were yesterday. Your success in anything is the product of what you do on a daily basis.

How to Reach the “Next Level”
At a certain point you will need to stop doing time consuming SEO tasks if you want to scale or amplify your efforts.

I remember when I first got into SEO, I did EVERYTHING. I quickly learned that there was no way I could take my business to the next level if I was trying to do everything.

Doing everything yourself is a good approach in the beginning if you don’t have capital. But as soon, as you start making money, I recommend you begin delegating time consuming tasks.

From day 1, analyze every task that you do. You will see overtime that you perform the same tasks all the time. These are the tasks that you must learn to delegate. That is, as long as you have the right systems in place.

At some point, you will likely want to go from being an SEO expert to being a true business owner (AND SEO expert).

Here’s a quick checklist on how you can scale your SEO efforts:

1. Create processes, procedures, and policies for EVERYTHING you do in your business. It’s impossible to scale without taking this step.

2. Test your processes, procedures, and policies. Have someone with little knowledge of the industry work through your processes, your procedures, and your policies. Why someone with little knowledge of the industry? Because your systems should be easy to understand.

Convoluted procedures lead to confusion. Confusion leads to time loss because of unnecessary clarifying or explaining. Bringing in an outside perspective is key to improving your systems. What makes sense in your own head, may not make sense to others.

3. Hire someone to fulfill your systemized tasks. Use Upwork, hire an intern, or hire employees if that’s the route you want to go. Give this individual their assignment and the corresponding procedure on how to complete it. If they are bombarding with questions, then you need to improve your procedures.

4. Create backup systems. At this point, you should have removed yourself from many time consuming tasks and delegated them. But, you need to always prepare for the worst case scenario.

For example, the person you are relying on to fulfill this work could disappear.

That’s why you must always have a backup solution. Keep some freelancers on your “on-call” roster. These are people you have built relationships with and know you can rely on them.

Another backup method is to avoid relying on a single person. Hire two, three, or even four people to complete a pool of tasks.

That way they have to compete. And even if one falls off the map, you still have the backups. And don’t forget, you have already created the systems at this point.

So, even if all your help disappears, you still have your systems. That means, you can quickly hire someone and get back on track.

5. Focus on actions that have the biggest impact. “Big impact” actions in SEO are creating awesome content assets, building relationships with key influencers, and promoting your content (link acquisition & social).

For example, I write the content on Gotch SEO because it requires my experience and my expertise. I could outsource the writing, but no one could replicate my unique perspective. I know that writing content is the action that produces the most SEO results.

You must figure out what actions you are best at. Maybe you excel at building relationships. Or, maybe you are a master promoter. Either way, identify what actions have the biggest impact on your SEO performance. Focus on those and outsource everything else.

Here are some SEO tasks that you can systemize and outsource:

Keyword Research
Competitor Analysis
Technical Optimization
Page-Level Optimization
Content Writing
Infographic Creation
Blogger Outreach
Citation Building
Conclusion
The key to becoming an SEO expert is to put in the work. Don’t be afraid to fail because SEO can be a roller coster. Embrace volatility and learn from it.