The Constant Evolution of SEO
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Why You Can't Rest on Your Optimized Laurels
Learning SEO is important, but as with anything else, you're never done learning about it. Google's algorithms don't stay the same for very long; what was good yesterday will be considered spam tomorrow. The only way to make sure your site stays in Google's good graces is to pay attention to the search engine's never-ending stream of algorithm updates.
This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
It may seem like Google makes constant changes just to exercise a certain puppet-master-like power -- while we all dance on strings -- but there is actually a very valid reason for the constant updates, and the truth is, it's the people who build and optimize websites who are often to blame.
Google's updates are mostly efforts to out-maneuver spammers, who take SEO best practices and abuse them until they become spam tactics. For example, an SEO best practice of Yore was to submit links to directories, thereby boosting a site's rank. But people abused it. They submitted links to every directory they could find, whether it was relevant to their site or not. People spammed directories by dropping irrelevant links into them. As a result, Google dropped directories from its guidelines, and many sites were forced to disavow such links in order to prevent penalties.