Spun Content & Blog Networks Dead - What is your agency going to do?

I am in contact with a lot of people that have built private networks beginning from last year (a good bit of them are agencies). I've gotten several emails asking me what I think about BMR etc getting indexed - NONE - ZIP so far have indicated to me that their network sites were hit. I put out the question last night to our private forum and so far no one has responded stating that their networks were compromised. Some still have emailed me over the last two to three weeks asking me different things they can do on their networks so obviously they have not lost them and are chugging right along

(one thought he had lost PR - still indexed - but turns out he had changed the site and left out the www. when he reinstalled wordpress. The PR5 he thought he had lost came back in a few days after I told him to put back the www - it can be strange that way just leaving that out can be considered for some things to be a different page)

Frankly Rental blog networks want people to believe and convince people that its something that has hit all both public rental and truly private networks. That way they don't have to answer alot of questions of why they didn't know better than to accept spun content, put 50-200 links on a single page with authors talking about 200 different subjects (okay slight exaggeration there ).

Some of them boggle the mind while claiming to be experts - like putting multiple domains on a single IP and creating huge footprints.

You are right Gear - the most surprising thing is how rental networks took this long to get dinged the way they operate. Its extremely unlikely that all networks got dinged and the guys I deal with didn't . Its not that I or they have any secret sauce its that plenty are still in operation without a hiccup because they were very private and setup differently than a rental network setup.

Exactly, Google is shutting down spun garbage networks. Hubpages and Ezinearticles allow contextual links (in author's bio for EA) and they are going strong.

The difference is they only accept unique and quality content. The new-age blog networks is going manual with quality content.

Exactly what I was going to say. Im so tired of "The sky is falling!!" mentality that this whole thing has created. Keep doing what you have been doing, just do it smarter. This sounds like its turning into a big conspiracy, and Google is sounding more like some big communist nazi monster, and theyre not! If you got money, build your own damn networks! Or set up free ones! Whatever!! Just dont let this whole "BMR is DEAD, SEO is DEAD" mentality stop your brain from flowing. And please people, stop preaching about quality content.. we all should know that. Quality returns quality results, crap returns crap results. Duh!!!

I've ranked serveral clients of mine to page 1 with investments of $50 and $100,- so there is plenty of room for small players.

Especially small businesses for keywords like "their profession + cityname" all to the top 3 and many #1 rankings and all of them within a $100 budget. Now working on the national term for one of these clients, a 2 word phrase, and he is ranking at #17 within 2 months and within a $200 budget so far.

So spun content and even public blog networks are FAR from dead. We haven't seen any drops after the deindexing, most people use 1 network and they put all their money on that, well that is just wrong, I spread my risk over 5 public networks and 7 other types of backlinks / platforms. Thats how you do "greyhat" SEO and that's how you survive. I understand thats kinda impossible for many people cause I pay >$700 on monthly subscriptions for networks, softwares and my VA.

Thats why most people are better of outsourcing it instead of wasting a lot of time and counting on 1 network, you don't want to know how many people switched from BMR to LinkVana or LinkAuthority to experience the same thing after time.

Blog networks are dead if they are pubic in any form. Blogs have to look like blogs also as manual reviews will kill them otherwise.

I just ranked a low-med competitive keyword to #2 with 9 homepage links.

Why in the world would it be diminishing returns to rank your customers sites?

You are clearly subscribing to the idea that quantity trumps quality. Blasting days were already on their way out and they will be gone in a couple more years. Place links on even PR3 pages where the links don't roll off and it will blow your mind in ton loads of serps. You don't need hundreds unless you are going into killer competition. The other rules of SEO still apply - keyword research is necessary with a network or without