I have a love/hate relationship with search engine optimization. I love it when we rank well, and I hate it when we don’t.

But I need to keep up, and I’ve found an easy, reliable way to do it.

How do I stay current? I read Search Engine News (SEN). I subscribed on November 23, 1997 and have been reading it every month since.

Yep, 1997 (I was kind of stunned myself). We launched our site a few years before that, and I suppose we started worrying about ranking well soon after. I’ve been reading the SEN newsletter for 18 years.

SEN covers the essentials and provides monthly updates on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and the social sites. It distills the latest developments down into manageable chunks and provides actionable information so you can stay on top of your site.

SEN doesn’t advocate trickery, deceit, manipulation, or spammy approaches to increasing your ranking. That’s a good thing because, over the 18 years I’ve been reading SEN’s stuff, I’ve watched as every “new” approach turned into penalty-generating “spam.” SEN advocates an approach that keeps you ranking high and free from penalties or demotions.

Following SEN’S suggestions, which are mostly about providing quality content, we’ve managed to rank high in the search engines and have done well on the social sites. Our traffic grows and grows. We hit a new all-time record one day last week.

SEN kept it simple. It started with the Unfair Advantage SEO book (updated each month), and then it added a Local Search Marketing book. The newsletter was a byproduct of keeping the books up to date.

Over the years, SEN has added a forum and a series of online classes. We’ve had some of our folks take the classes, and they’re consistently interesting, helpful, and useful. Recently, SEN started supplementing the monthly newsletter with an audio program that features an hourlong discussion of the issues addressed.

If the web is part of your marketing plan, then it’s essential that you know what’s happening. Whether you’re managing your own site or managing someone who’s doing the work for you, it’s important for you to understand the latest developments.

Search Engine News (SEN) makes it easy for you to stay current by investing a few dollars in a subscription and a few minutes a month to read the updates. You should subscribe. It’s good. I’ve renewed my subscription 17 years in a row. Is there anything I could say that would be a better endorsement than that?