SEO is dead... or is it?

[MJ DeMarco]

Another Google algorithm change and another swarm of internet marketers woke up to find out that their business is DEAD.

I've heard some folks claim "SEO is dead" -- but is it really? Perhaps what is really dead is your dumb article site that doesn't provide any value whatsoever except to flood the SERPS with meaningless results?

If the search engines are dead, then so is SEO.

The fact is, when your focus is SEO, your chasing search results.
When your focus is content and value, you're chasing real results.

The Fastlane Forum received about 50,000 visitors last month. I'm sure page views were around 1/2 million.

Do you know how much TIME AND MONEY I put into SEO?

Absolutely nothing.

You see, I don't care about SEO -- what I DO CARE ABOUT is content and value that people will find useful. Is anyone really shocked that Google doesn't care about some stupid-a$$ blog article that you paid some FiveRR writer 5 bucks to write?

I find the SEO game is much like money. People who provide value to the world don't have a problem making money. And shockingly, content providers who provide extreme value don't seem to have a problem with SEO either.

And then of course there is that entrepreneurs' business plan... in the section where it says "Traffic" -- their method of getting traffic?

SEO.

#FAIL. (Commandment of Control, The Millionaire Fastlane, page 224)

Sorry, but if your primary method of getting traffic is "SEO", this tells me your product is not good enough to stand on its own. No one shares it. No one recommends it. Nope, you need to rely on an algorithm to drive traffic, and hence sales.

Do you seriously think a sophisticated investor wants his investment (and future revenues) incumbent and dependent on Google?

Folks, forget about SEO, or at least, re-prioritize it. Focus on a great product; one that is shared, recommended, and one that drives a continuous sales cycle by virtue of it's use and recommendation.

Your product is the main course at dinner, the steak, not the salt by which the steak is seasoned.

 

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[Bigguns50]

Well, I'm betting that you're right because I have NO plan for SEO in my plan. I am JAMMING my site FULL of VALUE. I'm going where my market goes to tell them about it. My market is VERY social on the net so if what I have is good...they'll tell others.

Of course, I'll let you know how it works out.

 

[Rawr]

I heard my Internet marketing friend say this a week or so ago... lesson learned

 

[InMotion]

Great post MJ...thanks for clearing that up.

 

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[stranger]

The Fastlane Forum received about 50,000 visitors last month. I'm sure page views were around 1/2 million.

Do you know how much TIME AND MONEY I put into SEO?

Absolutely nothing.

MJ DeMarco, I think your book promoted this forum. The book was the best SEO for this forum.

 

[goodfella]

don't think seo will ever be dead, all the algo changes only weed out the bad seo's but the good seo's are still able to rank. I'm guessing this is what google's trying to do because it eliminates all the crap and junk from the serps.

 

[travisl]

Since the beginning of search engines there has only ever been ONE sure way to ALWAYS get traffic from them.

The best SEO experts in the world know what it is, and it is why they have been cashing in while everyone else runs around with every algo change, google slap and whatever else.

You see, what SEO truly is, is not what most people "think" it is nowadays. It is the act of making sure that your website performs optimally with traffic coming from search engines. Not Forcing the search engines to love you.

Here's the guidelines of what every search engine tells you they want. Are you ready? Here's the secret!

A website with content that will satisfy its viewers. That's It

Think about it. The Search Engines need YOU in order to stay in business. And as a matter of fact, YOU don't even need them.

Search engine users, use their favorite search engine because it helps them find the best sites or sites who's content they find interesting. Make those sites yours, and you've got a winning formula.

This always works in my experience.

 

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[SerpKing]

Completely agree that value and content are KING.

I still believe that SEO is important

1) If you're creating value, something great, then SEO can supercharge it and introduce even more people to it. SEO can be fairly easy, fairly safe, and remains one of the easiest ways to get traffic.

One strategy is to use "buffer" sites (Rank your own review sites, blogs, etc, and pre-convert the traffic on these or capture an e-mail lead, THEN forward them to your main site) So you're never actually putting a pile of risk on your main site when Google lays the hammer down.

Lets look at it in another light. Lets say I create an awesome blog about bodybuilding. Everyone shares my content, my facebook fan page is on fire, however I don't do any SEO because the growth is organic. Here's why I should do SEO:

1) If the blog is truly awesome it will have a TON of natural linking, social shares, and a ton of AUTHORITY in the eyes of Google, this means that the site probably won't get hit bad by any algo updates.

It also means that with a little SEO, it's much easier to rank an authoritative site (vs a new or non-authoritative) for super competitive keywords.

Taking a quick look "bodybuilding" has 823,000 exact match searches per month, "bodybuilding forum" has 27100 searches. Not to mention all the variations and long term search phrases!

Even if people share my site, recommend it to their friends, chances are I'm leaving a pile of traffic on the table by not doing any SEO. Just look at the numbers above, it would clearly have an awesome impact on my site to rank high for those keywords, and really add to the snowball effect.

Those crappy sites that have garbage content, provide no value, they don't convert anyway. The people who make those are usually the consumers of the SEO/IM industry - they are the ones constantly buying new tools, "hot ranking software", "secrets", etc. And rambling on the warriorforum about whether they should use 300 word crappy articles or 1000 word crappy articles (As if it actually makes a difference, trash is trash). It isn't a real business - attempting to rank garbage in the search engines isn't a real business or a business model.

That's the cliff notes about my thoughts on SEO.

P.S this is my first post here, I've been lurking for a little while - this is hands down the best forum on the net for entrepreneurs.

 

[biggeemac]

I agree, if your business is built around gaming googles algorithms, you will get jacked. If providing actual goodies is your focus whether its content or whatever, you should do fine. This is why the whole internet marketing thing and building your business around THAT niche doesnt make a lot of sense to me.

 

[dbennett]

Great point MJ. A few years ago I did some consulting work with a company trying to come up with some new SEO crap. They encouraged all their customers to bold every keyword in their articles, and use the desired keyword 20%(!) of the time in the article. The website is still around, but not growing for obvious reasons.

I'm a good writer and some friends and I had a lot of fun writing those horrible articles. Mind you, that was totally worthless SEO advice because it didn't work then and it doesn't work now to generate traffic thanks to Google algorithm changes, and it was ultimately wasted time on my part. The articles were ridiculously horrible, and as you said, contributed nothing whatsoever to anybody's life because they were crap in terms of content.

That being said, I think certain types of SEO can be helpful, like titling your article correctly (i.e. going to the Google Adwords tool and seeing what people actually search), using Google Plus, using Google authorship, etc. There is a certain game you have to play to get traffic even if you have good content.

 

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[Vigilante]

However, some indexing algorithms must have significantly changed, as we saw a radical traffic pattern shift on our eCommerce site. I suspect in the last wave a few weeks ago for Google was changing search results to drive more results to Google Keyword Advertisers. I can't blame them... that's what they SHOULD be doing. They own their sandbox. However, we did see around a 75% falloff in organic (non-sponsored) foot traffic, and our site is not content spammed but a destination for what we sell.

So... we need to change our game to keep up with theirs. Going to implement some long tail search terms to see if we can pick up via. PPC what we lost in organic results.

Test. Test. Rinse. Wash. Dry. Repeat.

 

[Lebron]

Thank you, MJ, for once again calling them as you see them. This is something I sometimes have to explain to my copywriting clients. All the clever tricks in the world will never be as effective as communicating the fact that you have a good offer and that you can add value to visitor's lives — not in the long run. Today's quick win is tomorrow's slapdown. If we focus on fundamentals, we don't have to worry about all that other crap.

 

[johnp]

Apparently SEO works for billboards now! I see this shit all over the place. If they are so good then they shouldn't need a billboard. And billboards in Philly are not cheap.

What does that tell you???

Pic attached.

 

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[Sir Ingenious]

SEO is pointless.

Being the Best in the World at what you do is the secret.

It's the answer in getting jobs, building businesses, freelancing, winning contests, etc.

 

[TheTruth]

Vig, this is actually a great point to put more perspective onto the subject matter.


Not every website can keep stacking value in a way that will help it rise in the search engines without any active work being done to it.

Let's use your products vs. this forum:


1) - Forum -

Endless possibilities to expand into the search engines for the following reasons:

- New members joining every day
- New threads being started everyday
- The high value community shares threads/posts/blog posts etc.
- Tons of keywords being targeted all related to the business niche
- The more members, the more authority and easier the threads rank

vs.


2) - E-Commerce Store -

Lots of Possibilities to rank in the search engines, but the process is vastly different.

- Once a product page is created, there is little room for further discussion (can't add anymore value)
- No members can join, only clients will be able to share the product pages
- You can keep creating product pages, but the velocity is slower then a forum given that new product adaptation is slower (also only the business puts up new products vs. forum members who can make an infinite number of posts)


That being said, SEO strategies will differ from business to business.

A product page is restricted in the amount of value it can offer. So maybe implementing a good SEO strategy makes more sense vs. a platform where user engagement is extremely high which is backed by a growing community.

However, some indexing algorithms must have significantly changed, as we saw a radical traffic pattern shift on our eCommerce site. I suspect in the last wave a few weeks ago for Google was changing search results to drive more results to Google Keyword Advertisers. I can't blame them... that's what they SHOULD be doing. They own their sandbox. However, we did see around a 75% falloff in organic (non-sponsored) foot traffic, and our site is not content spammed but a destination for what we sell.

So... we need to change our game to keep up with theirs. Going to implement some long tail search terms to see if we can pick up via. PPC what we lost in organic results.

Test. Test. Rinse. Wash. Dry. Repeat.

 

[Vance]

Learning SEO was the greatest thing I could have ever done. And I forced myself to learn it after spending tens of thousands of dollars on idiot scammers who talked a great game but didn't truly know SEO. I'm in a niche that is a great product, but everyone else has it. SEO is the only thing that put me over the top, to be able to get the best leads, to sell my product which has incredible residual commissions.

SEO will ONLY be dead, when Google goes strictly paid advertising. Until then SEO is alive and well baby. The problem lies in the fact that far too many people actually believe Matt Cutts of Google. He rolls out a new video and there they are with their tongues hanging out, licking up every last word. This man is a lying sack of crap, paid to mislead you into walking the primrose path of paid advertising with you. This is based on test-upon-test of what he said to do, only resulting in failure.

"Build a great site and people will link to YOU" is a bullshit statement which will completely waste your life's precious time. This isn't to say that if you have some great, unique product, that over time it will go viral. But realistically what are the odds of this? Certainly the not in the top 20 percent. Follow this advice and you'll fail faster than if you tried SEO.

That's not to say SEO is for everyone. I lost a site to a Google penalty back in late 2010 which cost me $6K per week. I was hunched over sick to my stomach for weeks. But I got back up and fought. Because I knew it was worth it. That's the key. Don't use SEO on some crap product that requires you to be there to take orders or to even be involved over 50% of your time. And NEVER hire people who's jobs are dependent on your SEO outcomes. I continue to pursue SEO because I sell my product once and it pays me for the life of the client, even if I don't talk to them anymore.

So choose the path to SEO wisely, but don't discount it all together. You will be dancing with the devil, this I assure you. But if you allow it to, it can make you a better, and wealthier person if you make the right decisions. The learning curve is huge, the largest it's ever been. Thin, affiliate, adsense sites are prime targets. Then again, there's folks with adsense sites with higher page rank than the manufacturer of the product making millions. They didn't quit.

How deep down the rabbit hole do you wish to go?

 

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[MUISaiyan]

However, some indexing algorithms must have significantly changed, as we saw a radical traffic pattern shift on our eCommerce site. I suspect in the last wave a few weeks ago for Google was changing search results to drive more results to Google Keyword Advertisers. I can't blame them... that's what they SHOULD be doing. They own their sandbox. However, we did see around a 75% falloff in organic (non-sponsored) foot traffic, and our site is not content spammed but a destination for what we sell.

So... we need to change our game to keep up with theirs. Going to implement some long tail search terms to see if we can pick up via. PPC what we lost in organic results.

Test. Test. Rinse. Wash. Dry. Repeat.

Hey Vigilante, add some related videos or videos of your own to your page especially from YouTube this should help you out. Also link out to authority sites related to your content like Wikipedia on each product page can help too.


And I agree with MJ, Value first, SEO traffic whatever second. Vigilant your a great example I know from fast lane INSIDERS your have a solid business already and SEO is just a traffic source.

 

[Talisman]

- Once a product page is created, there is little room for further discussion (can't add anymore value)

Reviews! They're gold. Just glorified comments, but google loves them, and the social proof = delicious.

 

[Berto]

2) - E-Commerce Store -

Lots of Possibilities to rank in the search engines, but the process is vastly different.

- Once a product page is created, there is little room for further discussion (can't add anymore value)
- No members can join, only clients will be able to share the product pages
- You can keep creating product pages, but the velocity is slower then a forum given that new product adaptation is slower (also only the business puts up new products vs. forum members who can make an infinite number of posts)


That being said, SEO strategies will differ from business to business.

A product page is restricted in the amount of value it can offer. So maybe implementing a good SEO strategy makes more sense vs. a platform where user engagement is extremely high which is backed by a growing community.

-False
-False
-Not necessarily true.

Ever hear of reviews?

It's not impossible to run a forum next to, and integrated with, an ecommerce site. Best of both worlds. Getting traction is what separates the champs.

 

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[Nosferatu]

I do think SEO has some place and value. Especially if you're just coming up and testing new ideas. If you're able to rank for anything you want and you time your ideas properly, you could easily have a basecamp where you can test different ideas, without having to break bank using paid traffic.

Now of course, everyone's ultimate goal should be providing some kind of value or filling a need in the first place. But i wouldn't say disregard seo completely, just don't make it a priority (but do it right)

 

[Czech]

The general conclusion I've taken out of this thread is that black hat SEO is a waste of time. It takes a lot of time, creates a lot of spammy backlinks, and one morning (as MJ said) you can wake up to find out your website is no longer listed on Google.

Whitehat SEO is important too though. I make sure all of my articles and pages are clean and have optimized headers using a Wordpress plugin. The only keyword research I do is for one phrase that I wish my website to get ranked on. It takes at most 2 minutes to optimize my articles and I do get extra traffic as a result.

By far though, I receive the most traffic through Reddit, Facebook and Twitter. Lately I have been much more active with Twitter and joining in on conversations. My subscriber list is growing much faster now!

IMO every blog today should take the "Viperchill" approach:

1. Write amazing content around a subject matter you live and die for
2. Build a following of loyal fans
3. Avoid advertising and spammy affiliate links
4. Monetize your website by creating your own products or promoting 1 or 2 quality affiliate products that you personally use

 

[Mrs. BRKb]

A product page has value by definition, because it has what a buyer is searching for.

The only reason "adding value" to it has come into the discussion is because the google reality distortion machine is seeking to change the definition/algo of value (to suit themselve$$$, reducing organic to 13% of a SERP page).

Remember back in the day when Google was an actual search engine (not a media co. selling advertising space)? LOL! Nowadays the only time Goog is a search engine is when Eric Schmidt is doing his [we] do no evil speeches in Washington ("we are a search engine helping searchers...").

 

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[Tom.V]

I'll chime in on this, since it seems a lot of people have the wrong impression of SEO. To really, truly just let quality content bring you traffic, you need one of two things: Time and/or a big break (ie "going viral"). Depending upon what industry you are in, and the competition, original quality content may not be enough to rank in the search engines. Let's take dating for example.

If you have a new dating site better than all of the rest, and fully optimized on-site content, you still won't rank right out of the gate. A lot of factors come into play here, and most of them require time. If the domain is new, you should expect your rankings to be very inconsistent for 1-6 months. You might get sandboxed, you might not.

Now let's say this same site incorporates some standard "blackhat" SEO practices such as tiered link building in a consistent manner. If everything is put together properly, it could begin ranking well MUCH faster than if no such practices were incorporated.

With that said, I am not taking social signals into account, just standard SEO practices. The way I view SEO is just as another traffic source, it is just more labor and time intensive with a lower initial investment. Anyone can do it, but not everyone can do it right. What it really comes down to is whether or not you are building a brand. If you are building a brand, you might not want to go overboard with shady linkbuilding. It will surely come back and bite you in the a$$.

 

[zacattack]

I've ranking sites and leasing them out for recurring monthly revenue all over North America for a few months now. I'm a one man team, so for the sake of efficiency I do not add ANY content or eye-catching designs until I'm getting the traffic that I'm after.

I've literally had sites on the first page for general contractors in big Canadian cities with a picture of a puppy and a youtube video.

So basically, yes you can put out quality content if you want to engage visitors, but if you aren't getting any traffic and sitting way back on page 5, it has nothing to do with how your site is ranking so don't waste time writing keyword dense 1,000+ word articles.

 

[theBiz]

Folks, forget about SEO, or at least, re-prioritize it. Focus on a great product; one that is shared, recommended, and one that drives a continuous sales cycle by virtue of it's use and recommendation.

While i agree with everything said above..... im not a fan of this last part.

"Focus on a great product". There are so many businesses, offline and online that all utilize marketing and sales people to drive 80%-90% of sales with little recommendations and sharing.

Facebook is a great product and provides alot of value, but if almost non one else could make money with it if they had the keys tomorrow. I thought the whole point to a "smart business" was to find ways to not need recommendations..... not only a scaleable business, but ways to drive traffic that can be more of a science rather than hoping people share and recommend.


What about these businesses that spend $1 to gross $2 all day with thousands of people via PPC and media buys.
What about companies that drive almost all of their sales via affiliates?

Would you rather go fetch a few clients and then hopefully get recommended to three of their friends.... or focus on scaleable, predictable methods that have massive reach, and fast.

While i would say too people spreading the word is the best way, its not as common or realistic... id say if you look at many businesses that are doing really well, they found ways to utilize traffic without recommendations.

Im sure vista print gets recommended alot and thats huge for them but im also sure there is some small printing company that has smart free trials along with smart upsells and an army of affiliates making a ton of money. I just think it makes more sense to shoot for the second guys position, only because it seems more realistic to duplicate that process rather than building a really good product and hoping it gets shared. We've all seen so many people holding gold and not being able to sell it.

Not to get into details, but you were widely successful in your previous business.... wasnt most of that attributed to the fact that you had MASSIVE exposure daily due to things completely aside from recommendations and sharing?

 

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[ageofz]

SEO is dead. SEO is also unsustainable. People that do SEO don't provide much value. Don't do it.

BRB quitting my lead distribution business that's lasted 3 years with growth each month and made 150k last month (record month, 60% profit, and I took a week off for vacation), and relies almost exclusively on SEO since day one...

Seriously though, if your business is in a large market where a lot of people search for it online, then neglecting SEO is not a good idea, in my opinion. Ecommerce and lead gen are two markets that really need that search engine traffic. Hoping that search engines will "do no evil" and go for the site where "content is king" is just like hoping that the stock market will take care of your money. Algorithm updates affect everyone, not just SEOs.

SEOs have evolved. We aren't blog comment and forum profile spammers. We know that value needs to be provided to get results. Don't think that your cool blog posts and social signals are going to stop a good SEO from ranking above you.

No, don't neglect product. But also don't neglect good marketing. SEO is part of a good marketing plan.

Product + Marketing > Product.

 

[Berto]

"SEO" is never dead -- the definition of what SEO means just changes.

SEO is search engine optimization. Your site should be optimized for the search engines.

Every page should tell the engine what it's about. It should load fast. It should be mobile friendly. It should have a sitemap. It should have proper linking, both internally and to external sources. It shouldn't have tons of crap above the fold. It shouldn't overdo anything, and it shouldn't have tons of people clicking the back button and going to the next item in the SERPs because it simply sucks for one reason or another.

For too long, "SEO" started to mean "crappy linkbuilding". It never really should have, and it certainly doesn't any longer.

The only reason I see for building linkspam and "churn and burn" sites is to make money to bootstrap/fund some other extremely whitehat project that eventually will NOT need spam efforts. It's honestly not worth it anymore, there's plenty of other ways to make money without destroying the biosphere of the web.

Anyway, SEO isn't "dead". The definition just means what it was originally supposed to mean.


EDIT: Relevant: Link Building with the Experts - 2013 Edition

 

[Yussef]

Learning SEO was the greatest thing I could have ever done. And I forced myself to learn it after spending tens of thousands of dollars on idiot scammers who talked a great game but didn't truly know SEO. I'm in a niche that is a great product, but everyone else has it. SEO is the only thing that put me over the top, to be able to get the best leads, to sell my product which has incredible residual commissions.

SEO will ONLY be dead, when Google goes strictly paid advertising. Until then SEO is alive and well baby. The problem lies in the fact that far too many people actually believe Matt Cutts of Google. He rolls out a new video and there they are with their tongues hanging out, licking up every last word. This man is a lying sack of crap, paid to mislead you into walking the primrose path of paid advertising with you. This is based on test-upon-test of what he said to do, only resulting in failure.

"Build a great site and people will link to YOU" is a bullshit statement which will completely waste your life's precious time. This isn't to say that if you have some great, unique product, that over time it will go viral. But realistically what are the odds of this? Certainly the not in the top 20 percent. Follow this advice and you'll fail faster than if you tried SEO.

That's not to say SEO is for everyone. I lost a site to a Google penalty back in late 2010 which cost me $6K per week. I was hunched over sick to my stomach for weeks. But I got back up and fought. Because I knew it was worth it. That's the key. Don't use SEO on some crap product that requires you to be there to take orders or to even be involved over 50% of your time. And NEVER hire people who's jobs are dependent on your SEO outcomes. I continue to pursue SEO because I sell my product once and it pays me for the life of the client, even if I don't talk to them anymore.

So choose the path to SEO wisely, but don't discount it all together. You will be dancing with the devil, this I assure you. But if you allow it to, it can make you a better, and wealthier person if you make the right decisions. The learning curve is huge, the largest it's ever been. Thin, affiliate, adsense sites are prime targets. Then again, there's folks with adsense sites with higher page rank than the manufacturer of the product making millions. They didn't quit.

How deep down the rabbit hole do you wish to go?

Thank you Vance I couldn't have said this better myself. I was scratching my head on this one like, maybe I have SEO mis-defined or something. Because the SEO I am thinking about is very much alive and well.

In fact, after the latest round of updates, those in the know know that spammers are currently ranking for highly competitive keywords by blasting sites with thousands of spammy backlinks.

Now whether one considers this SEO or blackhat or just plain trashy the fact is that it's a strategy outside of the normal "awesome product great branding" approach.

Which I believe to be good news for those with products of value and a solid online marketing strategy willing to use relevant high pr links and a protracted approach.

SEO is ALLLIIIVVVEEE

 

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[Yussef]

The general conclusion I've taken out of this thread is that black hat SEO is a waste of time. It takes a lot of time, creates a lot of spammy backlinks, and one morning (as MJ said) you can wake up to find out your website is no longer listed on Google.

Whitehat SEO is important too though. I make sure all of my articles and pages are clean and have optimized headers using a Wordpress plugin. The only keyword research I do is for one phrase that I wish my website to get ranked on. It takes at most 2 minutes to optimize my articles and I do get extra traffic as a result.

By far though, I receive the most traffic through Reddit, Facebook and Twitter. Lately I have been much more active with Twitter and joining in on conversations. My subscriber list is growing much faster now!

IMO every blog today should take the "Viperchill" approach:

1. Write amazing content around a subject matter you live and die for
2. Build a following of loyal fans
3. Avoid advertising and spammy affiliate links
4. Monetize your website by creating your own products or promoting 1 or 2 quality affiliate products that you personally use

Please don't take this the wrong way but the reason most brick and mortar "marketing" companies contract independent SEO guys on the down low is because they know if all they did was stick a great looking site on the web with a super great product to sale and a little optimization. They would get nowhere near page one for competitive keywords. Possibly not even locally.

Marketing companies can sit and fling the diatribe about SEO at their customers, but at the end of the day if you can't get them results online they will go to the one who can.

 

[Vance]

I always found the debate of white hat vs. black hat amusing. The righteous white hate wearers always love to claim how pure they are. Define Black hat? Sure there were things like cloaking that were pretty obvious, and naturally throwing 10,000 XRumer links in a day at a site is obvious. However everyone, whether you're the Pope of white hat or the Satan of Black hat are doing the same thing:

Taking manual actions to manipulate search engine rankings

You don't rank without LINKS, at least not in anything worthwhile that people search for. And in general if your product has high searches it most likely has value as well. If you think you can throw up a site that you intend to profit from (or profit from the product(s) advertised) you must have the following:

1) Properly structured site on-page
2) Quality content that let's Google know exactly what each page is about relevant to your niche
3) Quality Links with varied anchor text
4) Followed by content and link velocity

The first two are "white hat" so to speak, but those links aren't just going to magically appear from a white hat. So whether you go out and buy them yourselves, or buy domains of your own to build links on, or if you pay an SEO company to build you those links, you're still getting links manually built. The guy who does 10,000 in one day (not advised in most cases, but used to work) is simply speeding up the exact same process over those who pay an SEO to build them "25 quality links in a month" (God help you if you're doing this).

One is no more moral than the other, we all want the same damn thing which is rankings. It's kind of like saying committing suicide is a God-awful sin that will send you to hell, but smoking 2 packs a day which we know is one of the number one killers in the world is perfectly okay and you're going to Heaven. One's a fast death, one's a slow death.

Of course there are no guarantees in Google whatsoever either way you slice it. I have friends with white and pure sites who took the long road because they were branding their sites and wanted safety and longevity. Their sites got whacked in this last update a month ago, while my rankings all went up. They weren't even ranking that well but felt that they were "on their way".

That's the ultimate excuse of most SEO companies out there. "Google takes time, you don't want to rush it. Keep paying us $1k - $10K a month for our white hat strategies in which you will absolutely never rank from."

The quicker people stop listening to what Google says the better. They're not your friend, they're barely a search engine anymore, and they are looking at the bottom line just like every other company. And organic searches do not feed their bottom line. Everything but pay-per-click in their eyes is spam.