Penguin is Good for Us !!

First off, let me put this out there - I got burned, quite badly, by penguin. Spent on 3-4 different SEO agencies over a few months and then suddenly, that fateful day in April, saw all my hard earned organic rankings disappear. We had a pretty strong PPC campaign going so the damage wasn't that bad, but essentially, we're now paying for many clicks that would've been free. Also, there was a decrease in the number of incoming leads.

I went through my stages - from disbelief, to anger at google, to anger at the agencies, to Dwoskin induced acceptance And finally, to finding a way out. Which led me to this whole content marketing movement. Now to many of you, this content marketing business is old news, but to me, despite having read about the importance of quality content, it kind of just flew by. I figured, link building is much easier than investing time and energy in a long term content plan.

The more I've gotten into it, the more benefit I see of it. It's counter-intuitive and how. Good content can go Viral (and I don't mean Gangam type 220 million viral, but say you're in B2B and a great article spreads across even 100 potential buyers), good content is platform independent in a sense (ie. the same content can be shared on your blog, other blogs, social media sites, press releases etc) vs link building that's only keeping search engines in mind. Good content can build authority, serve as a branding method, introduce you to the buyer in a non-selling, expert role and sooo many other things. Oh, and apparently, post-penguin, the natural links you can build by virtue of your killer content is what's going to get you up there on Google. Can you say, counter-intuitive?

I'm a HUGE fan of Chet's work and I see this content marketing strategy as marketing that *perfectly* fits in with the sales methods that Chet preaches. It satisfies so many different strategic objectives, as stated above.

The funny part is, investment wise too, is doesn't really cost that much. But it needs to be content for its own sake - get *realllly* valuable content out there. Put yourself in the client's shoes and solve his problem. Even the high quality guest posting articles I'd seen in the past didn't really do that. They were well written, but basically, didn't solve anything for anyone. The benefits of this valuable content aren't necessarily as short term as a PPC campaign or a link building blast - but I *know* its going to make a tremendous difference in even conversions over the long term. Imagine buying from Chet after watching his program v/s someone who's link you happened to find up there on Google.

I should add though, this type of a campaign makes sense given the business we're in. I don't know about niche mini-site type businesses. Assuming it makes sense for your business, if you really give it a long deep thought and are committed to the effort and discipline it's going to take, sit with a paper and think of ALL the benefits that a strong content marketing campaign could give you. Then hopefully you'll see why Penguin was tough love in a sense. Think SEOMoz - abandon short term results for long term though leadership in your industry.

I wholeheartedly agree on the premise, because I was always trained in product development, quality of content etc.

I wish this happened in social, take a look at BHW's social section:

Nothing but:

[Get] xxxx follower bot
How do I fake comments etc
Bulk account creation

etc.

Nothing, or very rarely, is there a post about integration of social network accounts, using the rel="me" function, whether embedding a tweet in a blog post hopes social visibility (believe me, I looked), the advantages of Facebook Social plug-in for comment sections on websites for cross-platform marketing etc.

I realize this is BHW, but when a whole section is flooded by the same crappy stat game and not focused on metrics that matter (conversions, engagement etc) then it's all nothing but wasted energy and resources. I mean, I wrote a nice response thoroughly goving over syndication and white hat techniques but the thread died.
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/white-hat-seo/488491-white-hat-techniques.html#post4757017

My problem with BHWers is that they are not being creative enough with BH techniques. Prime example, you mentioned that it's worth becoming an industry professional in your field.

Simple way to do this: engage with existing industry leaders.

Write a critical piece,attacking say Rand Fishkin SEO philosophy.
Then, put your BH hat on and do the following (Twitter Only example):

1: Post tweet to your article from your website, retweet it using YLH with say 100 or so RTs
2: Take advantage of YLH, using the custom tweet function to post several 'one-off' pieces, which can be like this:

"Holy crap, @yourhandle absolutely KILLS @randfish in this article! #SEO #bringIT hxxp://..."
"Wow, @randfish does not look good here RT @yourhandle: Check out ... hxxp://..."
"Finally, someone takes @SEOMoz to the woodshed. Suck it, @randfish hxxp://"
...
3: RT those a few times (not too many)

Await for response from the community.

Don't think that could work, look at this article and the overwhelming response to it.

http://grindstoneseo.com/yeah-i-am-that-guy.html

Penguin is good for white hat SEO.
real content sites will rank higher then spam sites trying to make money of adsense

A couple of sensible posts in a row. What's the world coming to!?

It's the way we all need to go now, links are a long way from dead but you'll need something on your site before you go down that road. It's almost as if Google should have said that's what they were looking for...

Thanks for the post! I have been content marketing for a site for 6 months now and even though we lost rankings due to a neg seo attack we still get direct hits and google hits due to people actually typing in our name which equates to branding.

Now even though we are down we are not out and still generate enough income to keep us afloat, buying us time to experiment with a ton of new content for the site (as opposed to off site) and diversifying our keywords.

That is the importance of building a brand and creating a list.

Putting yourself in a customer's shoes is sometimes a difficult thing to do, but if you get it right you can do very well from it, we have done well out of posting instructions for the installation of our product on our website. Competitors products install very similarly, which means that even customers of competitors are slowly but surely backlinking to us. I will write more great content, it just takes huge chunks of time to do correctly.