You've got to know what’s changing, what's defensible, what’s fruitless and what is just downright dangerous. 

A single Google algorithm update can wipe out a site overnight.  Take the Google Penguin update for example. 

Knowing this about this stuff is kind of a big deal.  Especially if you offer SEO services and are responsible for any sort of link building for clients.  Using low level crap purely because it works in Google even though you know better and yet still use it on clients... you're going to have a bad time. 

SEO is one of those fields where everyone is an “expert”.  They’re literally everywhere.  And they publish junk.  This results in the pollution of our industry, the spread of misinformation, advice that is dated or just flat out wrong.  To top it off - SEO is getting increasingly difficult. 

May main advice for you if you are starting out with learning SEO is to avoid public forums completely.  It's where you find most of the "experts".  Avoid them like _______ (some terrible word I that would be edited out if I wrote it). 

This leads me to my next point - there is no substitute for experience.  You can read all the SEO posts you like but at the end of the day it is experience that excels you.  I am certainly no SEO expert (and I don't think I will ever be) but I never stop learning and have worked in this field long enough to know who is. 

And those who are frauds… Let’s just say the BS detector is smarter than your average bear. 

When you get caught up with the day to day of work, you often don’t have time read all the SEO news or content industry professionals publish.  Normally you have your gotos that you can trust more than others.  Certain authors at the likes of Search Engine Land, Search Engine Round Table, WebPro News do a good job at covering search related news.  There are some bloggers that generally do quality round ups. 

Another place I tend to lurk a bit is at Inbound; you can find some decent stuff there too.  One thing that bugs me about inbound though is sometimes I see the same guys hitting the front page over and over. 

I like a little variety in my information diet. 

One place you may not be aware of is Ahrefs Blog which occasionally links out to some good stuff including sources you often won’t see in the above mentioned.  I don’t know who chooses what’s published there (and they need to add a RSS feed to the top of that page) but generally the stuff they mention is pretty decent. 

However in early November they linked out to an article about link building post penguin that made me all:

It was pretty bad.  SEO misinformation doesn’t get any better than this.  I went to link to it purely to show you but... no, just no.  Ahref's build a quality tool; they should know better. 

So I guess the moral of the story is even the good sources get it wrong sometimes. 

What about you?  Are you just starting out learning?  Been in the game a while?  Who are the gotos in your feed?  Subscribe to ours if you want to read our future posts.  We will do our best to publish content that is misinformation and crap free! 

Mark is the Manager of Digital Marketing at Apex and has worked in the digital marketing industry since 2004.  Prior to joining Apex he worked in a variety of traditional marketing roles in both the corporate and SME environment in NZ and abroad, but these days much prefers the tangible measurability and transparency of digital marketing.