I'm still not convinced by Panda/Penguin...

[AngieHerrera]

Okay, granted, it's still early. But supposedly Panda/Penguin has "changed SEO" so spammy back links from web 2.0 sites (like Squidoo and Hub Pages) won't be worth anything, right?

Why then, did I get a Google Alert yesterday (for one of the keywords I'm trying to rank for) for a Squidoo lens that has not only pushed a certain website up to top 10, but overtook my top 10 spot (pushing me back to page 2 or 3)?

It's pretty frustrating (doubly so on an already poopy Monday!) to try to be all white-hat with link building, including writing good content (which I do), and yet get beat consistently by other folks who are clearly doing the grayish-hat stuff.

Thoughts?

[AngieHerrera]

Thanks for the reminder of that post – had completely forgotten about it!

[jgower]

Personally, it's only helped me as it's knocked down a couple of truly horrible backlink spammers in my niche...but I still think Penguin is bull.  I should not be able to hurt competitors, period.  And for all of those that say "A good backlink profile will trump the bad links"...that may be true for Amazon and SEOmoz, but for the Barbecue Restaurant in a Pop. 20k town on the interstate, it can mean disaster.  It's bad enough with all of the fake reviews going around, but add in the fact that 20 bucks can get your competitor 20k bad links compared to their 5 good ones, it's going to make a huge difference.

Search engines cannot should not operate like this.  They should be moving forward instead of backward, it's simply not fair to the real businesses that try to do good.  They need to focus on rewarding the good instead of punishing the bad.  Heck, regardless of fairness that's just good operant conditioning technique.  Anyway, there's got to be a better way...

[donford]

I think Google really wants to return SERPS which are naturally popular and circulated through the internet. As with any intent, once its known it can be exploited.

The whole industry that has sprung up around SEO can be considered in a small sense, a way to manipulate the search engines intent. If on one hand as a search engine you're going to give credit to a website that many other websites link to, then you also have to know that once that is understood there are going to be people and companies who will exploit that.

In a perfect world one would build a website, make the website great and enjoy top position in the search engine. In our world, one makes a website, makes its great and watches droves of copy cats decimate it by manipulating the search engines.

We all struggle with it. Personally, I have worked in 2 completely different industries and seen the exact same things happening. You get to a point where you say, well I can't rank unless I do X, so you do, then something changes and now you look like a chump. While the real exploiters work on a way to get a round it, only to re-market their solution in greed. It can be quite frustrating so I really do understand your plight.

That said, I like to wear the white hat, treat my customers, viewers and website followers as my best tools, because they are. If you're running an e-commerce site, treat a customer like they are worth 100x whatever profit you made from the sale. Keep your tools sharp, help them help you. If you treat somebody well, give them the necessary tools to let others know your site is a great place to do business, then the referrals, whether it is just word of mouth, anchor links or social buzz will come back to you.

Zappos.com is the model of customer service, and you know what, Amazon realized it and purchased them. In all fairness to Amazon.com I have spent well over a 100k personally with them and I have never once had a bad experience. Of course there has been issues with stuff I bought, but they treated me like I spent a million dollars with them and took care of each issue well over my expectations. Those 2 companies operate at  a level I only wish other major sites would.

Now I'm a web guy, I have competed with Zappos and Amazon and still do to this day. But here I am giving them a glowing review. I'm still one of their customers and competitors and have nothing bad to say about them without being a liar. I hope those who use the sites I work on, have the same feeling, and strive every day to make that a reality.

My thoughts...

[NakulGoyal]

I completely understand and agree. I think it's a constant cat and mouse game.

I don't know if you have read this post by Will or not, but if you haven't do read it: How Google Makes Liars Out of the Good Guys in SEO

[samfiora]

Don't believe everything you read.  Vary your link profile, promote with quality content and stay consistent.

I still have lens' on top of 200 million plus result terms that have been sitting there for years with only other web 2.0 sites linking in.

What is working for me is daily content creation and at least 2 tiers of promotion.

The top level being higher level social sites (think pintrest) being promoted by second tier links such as bookmarking and the profile based social media sites.

This really is a content game in my eyes and my method usually takes a minimum of five pieces (video,article etc).  These are placed strategically along the top tier and promoted on the second tier and yes I am still using squidoo in my procedures.