So the buzz word of the day in the internet strata is "Inbound Marketing" thanks to the zealous and quite successful efforts of the boys up at Harvard who run Hubspot. If I am not mistaken their offices are right above my favorite tea shop in Harvard square. But it's been a while. Things change fast or not at all in Harvard Square.
Their efforts are quite impressive with regards to branding and how to do "inbound marketing". Their sites appear like an SEO Christmas tree loaded with gifts for search engine marketers. I have to give them some credit here. Their output of free stuff and courses, how-to's, and other helpful gimme's are beginning to define what people think and do on the internet. At least from a content marketing angle. When in doubt define your customer then create the social hangout they have been missing all their lives, stay regularly engaged, create killer content, and watch the leads flow in. According to some of their claims it looks to be working.
The only fault I have with the people at Hubspot is they do not seem overly technical. Really there are some wonderful areas that that they seem to be missing or just have not gotten to yet. Pay per click is one, refinanced analytics another. Also their web page drives me crazy as there is no contact form no one to ask questions to, and no one to point out some glaring spelling and grammatical mistakes. Guys on your inbound marketing university certification page I must assume you are talking about Inbound Marketing Principles as opposed to "respondents proficiency in Inbound Marketing principles and best practices". I mean I know it's a school of sorts but come on you guys went to Harvard. (Does Harvard have principals?)
Anyway all kidding besides it looks to be a great organization and as an SEO I must agree that those of you out there still trying to "game" Google are absolutely just lazy about producing quality content and should consider another line of work. Ultimately Google is going to catch up with these types. Take Google Authorship for example. Do you think they are going to continue to recognize crappy spun content once this catches on? No because by that time every body that's worth reading will have plugged in the authorship code and will be standing by their search results smile in hand, and claiming ownership of their content. Goodbye spammy content. Brilliant really. My international marketing clients are embracing SEO and content marketing like there is no tomorrow, they get the hard work angle. It has always been about great copy, now it's just digitized.
Bottom line is SEO is hard work and it is not getting any easier.