SEO is an ever-changing thing and this can leave a lot of small business owners scratching their heads.  It’s not easy to find a way to succeed online in getting traffic and converting that traffic into profit.  Once you think you are starting to get the hang of it, it’s almost as if — Aha! Gotcha! — the rug suddenly gets pulled out from under you and you feel like everything you thought you knew was either wrong or is now inexplicably out of date.

Search engine optimisation success can be elusive and SEO changes are a fact of life. SEO success is going to be especially elusive for you t if you don’t stay up on it.

It’s something you will have to look at as an ongoing learning requirement.  Read on for some ways to do that:

1. Subscribe to good SEO blogs – SEO blogs keep readers abreast of big changes and tips that are being discussed.  These blogs are often run by industry experts and search engine optimisation companies who are willing to share their findings.
2. Hire an SEO company. Search engine optimisation companies will take ownership of this and keep you notified on things you need to know about.  The benefit for many here (besides not having to dedicate a full time resource to SEO) is that the SEO companies that are known for having a great reputation will often know about big changes and find ways to do damage control. And a good SEO company will have a diverse enough strategy that even a major change shouldn’t siphon 100% of your website’s traffic elsewhere. Diversifying your traffic sources is a proven way of weathering SEO storms.
3. Read the Google SEO blog. Google’s Matt Cutts’ blog, for example, is often talking about what Google wants.  Google isn’t against search engine optimisation; Google just doesn’t want you trying to game or cheat their system. Google wants the cream to rise to the top so that they can continue to be the preferred search engine.
4. Do a bit of research to check out rumors you’ve heard. You’ll hear rumors on SEO blogs, in webmaster forums, on Twitter, and so on that may create a knee jerk reaction. But always do what you can to research before reacting. There are a lot of good SEO resources out there but there are also a lot of people who are confused and /or sneaky and you can’t always trust 100% of what you read unless you do some research.