Since the beginning of search, the robots have crawled sites, chewed on links, and carefully digested each page. A page’s historical performance factored heavily in its ranking. Just as important were the inbound links that a page accumulated over time. Over the last year or so, this has all begun to change as the major search engines have experimented with three new factors that will dramatically change how we search (and how we optimize for search). 

Remember the good old days when a first-page search engine ranking was the Holy Grail? When social media was just for gossip, throwing sheep and re-connecting with old friends? Yes, it was a simpler time. Today’s landscape looks very different for those of us working to connect with our markets online.