SEO in 2022 — What's Changed and What Still Works

## The More Things Change SEO changes every year. Google makes thousands of algorithm updates annually. The SEO industry publishes breathless articles about each one. But the fundamentals haven't changed as much as the industry wants you to believe. ### What Still Works (And Always Will) **Creating genuinely helpful content** that answers real questions from real people. This has been the foundation of SEO since Google launched. It's never gone out of style. **Building backlinks from relevant, authoritative sites.** Links remain Google's strongest signal of content quality. Not because they're easy to manipulate, but because a link represents another site vouching for your content. **Technical SEO fundamentals.** Fast site, clean HTML, mobile-friendly, HTTPS, proper heading hierarchy, XML sitemap. None of this is new or exciting, but it's the foundation everything else is built on. **Consistent publishing.** Sites that publish regularly rank better than sites that publish sporadically. Not because of freshness alone, but because consistency builds topical authority over time. ### What's Changed **Core Web Vitals** are now a ranking factor. Site speed and visual stability directly affect rankings. LCP under 2.5 seconds, FID under 100ms, CLS under 0.1. **E-E-A-T matters more.** Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust — Google increasingly evaluates whether content comes from credible sources. This matters most for health, finance, and legal topics. **Passage indexing.** Google can now rank a specific paragraph or section within a page, not just the whole page. Long, comprehensive content benefits because individual sections can rank for specific queries. **People Also Ask boxes** dominate search results. Structuring content as questions and answers (like FAQ sections) helps you appear in these prominent boxes. ### What Doesn't Work Keyword stuffing (hasn't worked since 2012). Buying backlinks (Google's link spam updates catch this). Publishing thin content at scale (the Helpful Content Update targets this). Exact-match domains ("best-plumber-toronto.com" provides no ranking benefit). ### The Simple Truth SEO is simpler than the industry makes it: create content that genuinely helps people, make your site fast and technically sound, build relationships that earn links naturally, and be patient. Everything else is noise.