Few industry specialisms are as fast-paced as the art of SEO, or search engine optimisation in its full colours. At a key stroke, seemingly, search engines such as Bing and Google can redefine the criteria for a good website (or good content), changing with it the advice meted out by SEO folk and dooming web masters to countless hours spent fixing their websites and associated content.

While the overarching aim of search engines is to serve their users with lists of authoritative, useful results (and websites that should live up to this standard in their content), there is still room for the craft of SEO. But how that skill has changed over the years illustrates the changing sophistication of the search engines as well as the back story as to why content is now so important – and now it has been captured in an infographic, courtesy of Neil Patel at Quicksprout.

To the uninitiated, SEO used to be about rankings and keywords, but now that focus has shifted towards engagement and return on investment (ROI). In that old world content was about getting your website high in the rankings, where as now content needs to be useful and engaging. Likewise, links nowadays serve you well if they are from trusted, authoritative sources, and badly if they are little more than spam.

Perhaps the most interesting insight is that among agencies and companies, content marketing has become well integrated with SEO strategy. Although there is no indication of what this used to be, the recognition that content and SEO are two sides of the same coin will serve companies well.