In last week's episode, we asked whether SEO was still relevant in 2022. The short answer was yes. As promised at the end of last week's podcast, we have continued the discussion. SEO strategies and trends are often dictated by the current state of Google search, and Google has changed greatly over the years. These changes have been driven partially by weeding out spam content, but also by the emergence of new devices and competitors. Competition fuels Google's need to maintain its status as the best resource for finding anything online. To be the best resource, they need to understand search intent and get the most useful information in front of its users as quickly as possible. With this general philosophy, we've seen Google Search evolve to include shopping carousels, maps, videos, and rich snippets like FAQs. Google advertising initiatives also play into changes to SEO strategy. Google's ongoing efforts to increase the number of sponsored results with organic results have influenced layout changes within search engine results pages (SERPs). This in turn affects SEO. Organic results have slowly moved down the SERPs, with more ads appearing at the top of the page. Google's goals can be summarized as increasing ad revenue while maintaining its reputation as the best resource online. Nefarious SEO tactics that used to work, like excessive backlinking and content scraping, not only don't work anymore but actually hurt your rankings in 2022. The amount of spam created through bad practices made for a bad user experience. This, if not corrected, would have cost Google many users. In general, anything that negatively impacts user experience is now penalized, including technical issues such as site speed and lackluster hosting. Google maximizes the visibility of accessible and helpful content. In this week's Digital Marketing Mondays, Hans and Devin discuss SEO strategies that work in 2022 and old techniques that should be left in the past. Resources: https://gtmetrix.com/