"Iffy" Question

[blake-76624]

Hi Guys and Girls,

I have been studying SEO for a few years now.  I have learned quite a bit along the way.  One thing that I have had BEAT in my head is "Create Quality Content".  When I used to ask "What Should I do to get more visits?" I was told, "Create QUALITY CONTENT".  That was great advice, and I have done that.  I have created over 600 pages since then.  I went from 200 visits per month to now just over 5,000.  Even more importantly, I have increased my lead conversions.

I say all of this because, about two years ago I told a competitor basically how you rise up in the search engines.  He turned around and bought a domain that was 3 years older than mine and had a main keyword in the domain.  He then just started building links with a bunch of blog comments and forum posts (The blog comments have like 2,000 comments on them).  In other words, he did what I would NOT do yet he is #5 for this keyword and I am #9.  (Although, I turned around and built another site and now I am at #13 for that and it has been up for a year now.

I say all this, not to bore you but to tell ask you, DOES IT WORK IF YOU DO BLOG COMMENTING, FORUM POSTING, LINK WHEELS, ETC.  Do you obtain higher rankings?

Should I be doing a bit of video marketing?

I know a lot of people will say, "Why would you spend your time on things that may slightly impact your rankings, but obviously it did something for this guy.  Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

[YannickVeys]

It won't be today, it won't be tomorrow, but someday his rankings will plummet like a rock dropping to the bottom of the ocean. SE's are getting smarter and smarter and they will find out how to compute for this lousy way of doing SEO. You on the other hand, have absolutely nothing to fear. I say, stick to your strategy, but try to turn your pages into more link magnets. Involve people in the content creation so other people can endorse your content. (By tweeting, blogging or liking your content). You will be the winner in the long run.

Should you be doing video marketing? Like Yeeees? Video results in the SERP's get higher ctr's compared to results that are higher up the SERP's, so that would be perfect for you to screw with your competitor.

[zeepartner]

I agree with Yannick here. Even though I always run into various competitors who are successful with shady techniques, I don't believe that this makes sense in the long run. Sometimes it can take incredibly long until these spammers get detected, but eventually they do go down the drain. Be patient and don't worry. Linkspam will go away, good content is here to stay:)

[randfish]

I wrote about this topic a bunch here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/white-hat-seo-it-fing-works-12421 but basically, I ask myself a number of questions:

1. What are my goals in web marketing? Is it purely to make the most money possible? Am I trying to build something bigger than myself? Something that will make people happy? Something that can last even if I'm not around?

2. Do I want to prioritize the short term or the long term? Can I afford to make more revenue, get more traffic in the next 6 months, if it means the 5 years after that might suffer?

3. Do I want to work on building a brand and a company and a product or just a website that gets traffic?

4. How much stock do I put in Google's webspam team vs. my ability to outthink them? Do I have the mental discipline to withstand the nervousness, doubt and fear that comes with spamming/manipulation the engines?

5. Do I think that spam and low quality sites can convert at the same rate as a high quality brand? If not, does the delta make spamming non-viable, even if my only goal is revenue?

The answers to those questions for me are clear, and they're what's led me to always pick white hat for the projects I do.

Hope that helps!