I’ve been freelancing for about six months now, and I truly enjoy not only the control I have over my daily schedule, but also the ability to work on a wide range of projects.

Recently, I began a partnership with an online marketing company. It works out well, because they need a writer and editor, and I need to learn more about writing for search engine optimization (SEO), which everybody wants and needs these days.

What I’ve learned so far—nobody really knows the best way to make your pages rank higher in the search engines. Or I suppose it’s more fair to say things that worked in the past no longer work thanks to Google’s Penguin and Panda updates, which were made to punish “black hat” SEO’ers who were trying to trick the system.

According to Llew Jury Media, there won’t be as many short cuts in the new era of SEO. The key to classifying your site as an authority in your industry will be to prove you are an authority in your industry, and the only way to do that is to provide relevant, informative and engaging content to your audience.

Here are the new rules for SEO according to Llew Jury Media:

• SEO is definitely now all about creating quality content that earns the link, not buys the link back to your site.
• Landing page domains are now not seen as the best strategy.
• We don’t need meta keywords or tags anymore.
• Unique and small title tags are needed.
• Best to have a call to action in the meta description.
• Use variations of anchor text in your links.
• Quality of links rather than quantity! Say no more.
• No longer do we use site wide links in a website’s footer.
• Blogs and blogging are the key to the content game.
• Video and info graphics are vital.
• Navigation is important for users and this leads to better time on your site and therefore greater chance of securing a lead.

The only thing you can count on in life and in SEO strategies is change. But, one thing never changes. Content is still king.