New here but agree with everything you say, we have a competitor site that ranks number 1 for the main industry keyword. The on-site SEO is average but they have hundreds of backlinks, the majority of which are from totally unrelated sites.

They have been number one for a couple of years so Google does not seem to have caught up with them yet……

New here but agree with everything you say, we have a competitor site that ranks number 1 for the main industry keyword. The on-site SEO is average but they have hundreds of backlinks, the majority of which are from totally unrelated sites.

They have been number one for a couple of years so Google does not seem to have caught up with them yet……

Even the one way links from site “A” to site “B” weren't hard to get before search engines because it made it easy for people to see how much site “A” really was, and go back there (avoiding the link to site “B” next time).

They were easy to get back then. “I need a link, could you please help me” was just a way to get found – no search engines – no penalties – and WTF is page rank? It doesn't yet exist! Even the Yahoo Directory listed you for free… and if you WERE listed for free back then, you're included for free ever since. Anyone new has to pay Yahoo $299 per year. So catch 22, while links mean popular, today nobody hands them out like the nearly free candy they were in the euphoric link exchange days of the dot com era.

They weren't “gaming the system” back then because Google didn't exist – and the game belonged to webmasters who optimized by getting links to get found. Google is now saying “Hey! If you don't have back-links we won't place you because you're not popular… and if you're good at it and DO get back links we will fix your ass. Google has bullied itself into telling you that ONLY Google can be used to find you, and not too many links too fast. They tell you those links BETTER have that “nofollow” tag attached and better NOT be paid links no matter how grateful you are to that the poor slob whose kids need braces who linked to you. (You'll have to do it for free – sorry – Google is watching).

I know an award winning journalist with 17 years of experience in the industry working for weekly and daily newspapers, who is herself an expert at doing press releases. She retired and opened her own business, built a new site, used her newspaper experience and did heavy press releases and in two months had almost 7,000 inbound links. Is that gaming? Doing what you know how to do best is not gaming anything. Webmasters were around well before Google arrived on the scene and building and getting links is how they made the internet work. It's what they do best. Johnny “Google” Come Lately – quit telling your elders what to do. There was a day when you weren't around you know, and if Google Inc.'s server rooms blew up tomorrow, we would still know how to make the internet work without you.