Post Penguin 2.1 - Is there anything left we can do???

Anyone who says you can't rank a site anymore is dead wrong...

 

That would be silly to say, as there will always be top ranking sites. The question is how can we rank well over the long term, through updates, in a way that benefits users. Battling Google and bending the rules is not sustainable. The people that were successful based on previous techniques find their sites dropping like flies. Just look at all the threads like this one, complaining about rankings. What good is a keyword rank if it disappears with the next update?

Think long term instead of always trying to play catch up.

 

Yes, traditional SEO is dead. It is becoming harder and harder to game the system. Google's algorithm is becoming more and more sophisticated. Building your own links no longer works. Just go check out Google’s Webmaster Forums to see what is going on. Hundreds of webmasters are complaining every day that their sites (which may have ranked high for years as a result of their own link building schemes) are no longer even showing up in the SERPS. If your site hasn’t been affected yet, it’s either because you have lots of inbound links that you didn’t build yourself, or you just haven’t got caught yet (and you will).
The question I always ask myself now is this: Would I be doing this if Google didn’t exist?

I think writing articles and blog posts for high traffic sites are still an excellent source of traffic, so I still do this knowing full well it will not likely help me in the SERPS (and if it does it's just an added bonus).

 

Nice write up and very well thought out. Definitely food for thought and I happen to believe you are absolutely correct.