Ugh. I'm sorry to hear this.

I'm disheartened by the amount of people on these forums being attacked by competitors with bad backlinks and fraudulent PPC charges. Is this really the direction businesses are going in the online marketing world?

Sad...

Sorry I have no suggestions. Except maybe to have faith in karma?

Well I don't know anything about this "SEO College Tutor" but it sounds fishy to me.

You can have the "key info" in the title and still have it be readable. Also, at the very least you should take me up on my suggestions for capitalization. It currently looks like it was written by a 5th grader. No offense. But you capitalize the first few words, stop doing it, and then go back to capitalizing at the end. Looks amateurish and reads horribly. At the very least fix that.

I'd encourage you to grab some impartial observers (a mom, gramma, aunt, uncle, somebody not good with computers you happen to know) and ask them to look at the SERPs you are targeting and choose a site to visit. Or maybe even ask them to run some random searches and watch how they react to SERPs and what pages they choose to click on. I think that you will find the title tag to be the difference maker (beyond placement of course). What you are doing is stuffing keywords to encourage placement in the top of the SERPs. That's what the "SEO tutor" is having you do. That is not necessarily going to work. There are plenty of ways to rank well and still have an attractive title for your end-user.

I've seen it work both ways. I've seen a page sit at number 1 for the desired keyword results and get no clicks. Why? Only answer I have was a terrible Title.

I'm glad you are going to test both methods. That's a great way to approach things.

Keep in mind with your SEO Tutor.. You need to take every factor into account with SEO. There is no perfect way of doing things. My way isn't perfect, their way isn't perfect. You need to find your own truths somewhere in between. You seem to be working towards that so you should be alright.

But boy I have to say my gut tells me that this alleged Tutor has a few things mixed up...

Forget about how the Search Engines see this for a second and think about how a potential user sees it. Play the customer. Pretend you are them. Are you them yet? Good, let's proceed:

Look at these two results and decide which one you want to click:

Internet Marketing Company | Denver SEO | Brand Name

Internet Marketing Company|Denver SEO|Brand Name

Bet I know which one you chose.

Don't stuff! Take care with your titles! Titles are the single most important aspect of your digital marketing campaign! This is the first thing that a potential customer will see when coming to your site. Make them want to click it!

Whoa dude how'd you get that article from the future like that?

("AUSTIN, TEXAS— Oct. 31, 2013 — 21CT, Inc.")

Okay so beyond my Bill & Ted reference calling out an error in your article, I just want to say that there is nothing wrong with what you call "pull quotes" and they definitely will not negatively affect your SEO.

Repeating a sentence does not qualify as duplicate content. Duplicate content would be a problem if you had this exact same article on another page of your website. In other words, the duplication problems arise between pages, not within pages. Does this make sense?

Pull quotes work fine, it's all about user experience.

I see no attack here. This article was mostly mush imo. I agree with EGOL.

Building your brand is all that SEO should be if you consider that SEO is modern day marketing and your brand should be your number one focus. I looked at this guy's picture and that pretty much summed it up for me.

I also think he's completely missed the point of what Rand is saying. The idea is building a brand first to strengthen your business, gain a following, increase conversion and retention and thus gain organic SERP improvements.

Anyway

Silliness

Ha! Hey I'm sorry if I offended you by linking his picture. It was meant mostly as a joke. The guy comes off as a sensationalist trying to draw attention. To me his picture screams that same thought. Perhaps it was off-base.

He claims he's not using Rand's last name in an effort to not rank for that keyword yet he uses his first name and SEOmoz enough times to rank for either. (How many other Rands do you know?)

This whole "SEO for the short-haul" technique baloney is just that: baloney. It only works some of the time and never builds business to last. Go down the list and show me of those "million cases" how many of them are established businesses that will be successful for years to come.

Your post, Yiannis, and this guy's blog post both had the same "I CAN SHOW YOU THOUSANDS OF EXAMPLES" yet none of them are showing me examples of successful businesses ranking and proving they have a place in the market for the long-haul. Not a single example of that provided by this blog.

YouTube video rankings, article rankings.. okay. I get the point. The timing and freshness of that content won out. But it'll go away as quick as it came and what will be left?

I know that blackhat SEO is working in many examples. It works in the industry I'm doing in-house for and it drives me bananas. But I also know that the companies it is working for are not succeeding based on this. Is this because they are not focused on brand-development and a modern marketing strategy? Maybe. That would certainly be part of it if you asked me.

Google is going to screw up and fail at what they set out to do. We know that to be true. But we also know what they are trying to do. What they are trying to do is get rid of these blackhat SEOs and dissemble their tactics from the ground up. They will eventually succeed entirely. They're Google, after all.

I don't know about you but I want to build a company that can withstand the test of time and the power of Google.

• 1 -- well put.