Yes ... brought it all in house to ensure that we stayed 100% whitehat. Spent A LOT of time removing and disavowing spammy links. Once that was completed, rankings IMMEDIATELY rose causing our quality content to actually be seen by people. Our content was high quality and unique which resulted in it immediately being linked to by big sites like CNN, Fortune, WSJ, etc which caused 1,000 little niche sites to link to it as well which resulted in an even bigger boost. When everything went bad, it went bad quickly ... and when everything went right, it shot up like a rocket. They key, as everyone else says, seems to be to provide well structured quality content and the rankings will take care of themselves. 
Most important thing I have learned so far: Provide quality content that is well structured according to the principles found here on Moz and your rankings and backlinks will take care of themselves. If I had done that from the beginning when I started in March, my sites would be 3 to 4 times more successful than they are now. All it takes is a week or two to read and watch EVERYTHING that this site has to offer ...
