The Internet never grows stale. Your SEO strategies shouldn't either.

A lot can change in five years. That's a whole run for some television shows or the entirety of time spent in a city for some sports teams. In the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), however, almost everything one knew about the practice can easily be affected.

In earlier days of SEO, the big pillars of success were interconnectivity through keywords and backlinks. Keywords drew the attention of search engines while backlinks provided legitimacy to a website or article. Unfortunately, as these processes became more well known, they also became watered down by both misuse and overuse. "Keyword stuffing", or sacrificing worthwhile content to garner more attention, began to trip alarms in search engine algorithms. These algorithms were adjusted to seek out this practice as the search engine's prime goal is to provide genuine and helpful results to its users. Backlinks suffered a similar fate in that links became a new form of spam to trick an algorithm through abundance instead of the connections made.

Another major player in SEO that was not as prevalent five years ago is social media. Large platforms like Facebook and Twitter were obviously around, but their impact on SEO has changed. Sharing websites or pages with multiple groups on Facebook no longer affects searches outside of Facebook in the same manner. The same is true for Twitter. As these and other platforms continue to grow and evolve, they appear to provide an all-encompassing web experience for their own users. Instead of going to Google to find results, Facebook has grown to a size worthy of its own searchable ecosystem. This shift to social media also brings searchers closer to direct commentary on any topic or product. There is more information available in a shorter time instead of breaking the process down into multiple steps.

As long as the internet exists, there will be curators that aim to provide a map through its many twists and turns. Understanding how these gatekeepers create this map is the key to ensuring a product or service is visible to possible users.