Once upon a time, a few years ago, there was an online republic called the Internet. The Internet was a flourishing republic, land of freedom and opportunity. It had several elected leaders who seemed to get along just fine, but one of the most prominent and influential figures in the republic was Google – the powerful and wise Minister of Information. Google was helping people find whatever information they were looking for and everyone was grateful. For a long time Google was doing a great job, but after a while people started lying to the good minister so he couldn’t work well anymore. Being kindhearted by nature, Google chose not to take action against the wrong-doers but once they started interfering with the good people of the Internet, he decided it was time to deal with them once and for all.
This is how things in SEO used to be. People quickly started using Google exploits and launched low-quality websites to the top of the search results and Google couldn’t do much about it. People who were performing quality SEO were suffering because they invested in a method that was being overshadowed by cheap links and spun articles written in broken English for the sake of quantity SEO. It seemed that there was no hope for quality SEO to be recognized.
However, today things are much, much different. After the Google Penguin and Panda updates were introduced, things took a turn for the better. The low quality websites that thought they could just game the system are back to the depths of SEO Hell, where they belong. Sadly, there was also some collateral damage along the way, but in most cases Google managed to fix it (if they were contacted about it). Hence our fairytale republic gets its happy ending – hard work, sacrifice and quality SEO are being rewarded while quantity is being frowned upon.