New SEO strategy?

How common is sabotage as an SEO practice? I just got into building websites again and was wondering about this recently, especially just as Google has been cracking down on spammy websites.

Basically, the idea behind sabotage is you take the links/websites that rank higher than you, and you do your best to get them sand-boxed. For example, get them linked to by a bunch of viagra sites, or add them to shady directories, or anything else you can think of that Google considers a "bad practice".

Have you heard of this being done? Have you done it? And if you have, did it work? If it worked, what exactly did you do?

I don't necessarily want to use it as a tactic (ahem), but I would like to informed about the strategies that people employ.

ALSO, if you were affected by sabotage, how did you reply. What did you do to save yourself?

 

I'm sure there are some who do this but what a horrible technique. Seems it would be better to spend the time and effort to boost your own site rather than try to tear someone else's down.

 

I agree, but apparently people do it, so there is no reason to turn a blind eye to it. Is there a way to report links that you don't want to Google? I'm just trying to understand.

 

Google becomes smarter with the span of time and I hope they will find any solutions on it.

 

In my opinion this is something very bad and it will result for you in bad manners, it's just a matter of time.

 

I don't get it? Are you saying people here will target me? I don't advertise here anyway, so it doesn't really matter to me. I'm just trying to address something that people don't. It seems like some look at this as taboo unless a person that was affected by it wants help.

I'm not asking for much else.

 

All I'm saying that's a really non moral way to achieve ranking.

 

We have one latest update called Google's Panda 4.0
Tuesday, Google began rolling out panda 4.0 and it still may be rolling out, but by now, you should know how, if any, you were impacted by the Panda 4.0 release.

I want you all to check your analytics, filter it by Google organic traffic only and see if you see a drop, increase or no change on around May 20th and May 21st.

 

Well the updates are out now and all spammy contents got penalised.

 

Although there most likely are not a one-size-fits-all SEO strategy — mainly because that ideal strategies will vary greatly between industries, company capabilities and business models — the one thing remains true for everyone regardless of the size of the search team: ruthless prioritization of SEO efforts remains a crucial component of SEO setting up tasks.