This is a trick that still works.
At the end of 2016 I wanted to rank high on Google for “SEO trends 2017.”
My SEO skills were far from what they are now, I had a new site, and I didn’t have much time.
It was around September. I put together my article. I published it, submitted it to Google Search Console, and waited.
Nothing happened.
I didn’t rank 🙁
Again
In 2017 I wanted to rank high on Google for “SEO trends 2018.”
My SEO skills had improved a bit, my site was still relatively new, and I still did not have much time. Certainly not enough time for a thorough link building campaign.
But there was an asset I did have.
A head start.
It was Spring. The year before I started in Autumn. 2017, I’m arriving to the party early.
I wrote my article.
Not going to lie, it was stupid. Crypto had started blowing up so I wrote that blockchain was going to be a major trend in SEO in 2018, lmao. It made my content more relevant. Of course I also added voice search, schema, information architecture, all that fun stuff.
Side note: information architecture actually is HUGELY important, and something I think is very fun.
I didn’t need it
Like I said, I didn’t have much time to thoroughly build backlinks.
Turns out I didn’t need it.
In Spring of 2017 I was the only person writing about SEO trends coming in 2018.
This made it so that I was near immediately at the top of Google not long after publishing.
And every month or so I’d update the article – add something new, or clarify something, etc. And then I’d alter the date published to reflect the updated content.
What happened is when the hot season came around, I was first to show, and I naturally acquired backlinks.
I was the only site that had written about SEO trends in 2018 so other blogs linked to my article.
By the time the big players – Neil Patel, Backlinko, Ahrefs, HubSpot, Moz, etc. – wrote their SEO trends in 2018 articles, I was already ranking well.
And while I didn’t end up beating all these players that year, I did beat some of them.
My goal was to rank well, and I did it with an article I wrote in an afternoon and briefly updated every month to stay current.
I didn’t even manually go out and build links.
Why is this cool?
- Every niche has keywords like this. Fintech trends in 2025. Agriculture trends 2025. Restaurant trends 2025. Every niche.
- The main people searching keywords like this will be in your niche. By showing up for these keywords, it’s an easy way to make your brand a thought leader. In my case the people searching “SEO trends 2018” were people at performance marketing agencies, even top ones.
- For many of us, when we have ambitious dreams, what we instead see is a huge mountain. The thing is, if you try to climb that mountain all at once, it’s 100% going to be difficult or impossible. But if you slow play it and get a head start, if you’re willing to wait and take gradual steps (in my case making small updates each month), that ambitious goal is achievable. Very achievable, in fact. But when you’re head up again the mountain, with little time to spare (me in 2016), it’s hard.
One of the craziest or most nonsensical shortcuts you can take to your goal is to take the long cut. Get the head start. Give yourself time. And that intimidating mountain, while still a mountain, becomes a lot more achievable.
