Why are "outdated" or "frowned upon" tactics still dominating?

[Jay328]

Hey, my first post here.  I recently picked up a new client in real estate for a highly competitive market.  One trend I'm noticing with all the top sites they are doing old tactics such as:
-Paid Directories
-Terrible/Spam Directories
-Overuse of exact text keywords for example: City name + real estate
-Blogroll/link exchange
-Tons of meta key words
-B.S. press releases

• blog commenting with kw as name

Out of all the competition there is only one guy who is following the rules of today. One thing I'm noticing is that nobody is doing legit guest blogging, has great social presence, has awesome on page, etc.  It's pretty frustrating as I'm trying to follow the rules and seeing these guys kill it by doing "bad seo".

Anybody else find themselves in this situation? I know I'm probably beating a dead horse but I needed to vent about this

[DennisSeymour]

it depends on the niche and the specific keyword. It's actually pretty normal on many niches. Some are monitored more closely by Google. Some get away with it for the next 3-6 (sometimes more) months

Those tactics still work, with just a few tweaks this time around and not just 1 anchor blasts. Plus there are a lot of non-mainstream tactics being applied today so it is harder to find out. You can see them with majestic, and your other link checkers, but most of the best SEO's, you won't see their links at all.

[zeepartner]

In my experience, many so called SEO's don't have much experience and obviously rely on the wrong sources. They live in a lala-land, thinking they're the only ones who figured out how to trick the game and will "rank #1". Funny enough, they never even state what keyword they would like to rank #1 for... So that shows a clear misunderstanding of how people even search for and find stuff on the web.
I guess it has to do with a lack of training and maybe also the quick development of how things go on the web: Marketing standards from 1970 might still apply, while SEO from 2002 does not... And some people stand still and refuse to learn. Good for us! We can outrank them:-)

[SEO5Team]

With Google getting sophisticated with their algorithm and cracking down on spammy sites with every new update they roll out, it's only a matter of time those sites will get impacted by one of those updates. Stick with the recommended methods and you will be the winner in the long run. Tempted to quote EGOL here ; build great content for the visitors, optimize / distribute the content effectively and the rankings / traffic will follow. 

[InMarketingWeTrust]

I'm not sure I would say that banned tactics are 'dominating', but the bad eggs generally rise to the top. You usually hear more about what people are doing wrong, than what they are doing right. Seems to be the way of the world now-days.

There are plenty of White Hat operators across all industries. Over time, you will find that the the tactics you mentioned will fade away and new ones will rise to the top only to make way for others. The true SEO companies will outlast the other tactics.

Finally, the higher the competitive nature of the industry, the more people will push the boundary to reach the top.

Best of luck with your new client!