SEO Changes over the Past Few Months?

I've been out of the SEO game for a little under the year now. I've been frustrated with the Panda updates and Google nuked most of the sites that I have owned from the search engine results. I have no idea what's performing well right now and what's not working well.

Before, links from high PR blogs worked well. Has Google devalued most of the methods that worked well a year ago?

 

Some of the methods still work but you can't spam anything and a very important factor is being unique and indexed first. Here's what I do for the most part to keep my sites in #1:

1. Unique Quality content
-All search engines like quality unique content. The internet wouldn't be the same if everything was simply copied.

2. Keywords
-Keywords partly help SE know where to put your site/blog/etc.

3. Title, Description
-Pretty self-explanatory

4. Site Map
-Site Map's help SE and Users to easily and quickly navigate threw your site/blog/etc.

5. robots.txt & Directory submission
-Helps your site/blog/etc by telling Multiple Search Engines to "crawl" your Link and update their databases.

6. Social bookmarking
-Facebook is a powerful tool...This help you spread your content almost regardless of content.

7. Forum posting
-Help attract quality traffic to your site/blog/etc, easily with forum posts. Either posting quality threads or several quality posts with your link in the signature.

8. Article submissions
-Helps gain traffic by rewriting your content to ensure you gain optimal SE rankings for you Niche.

9. Blog commenting
-Another easy way to spread you link. Quality comments on blogs help lead to more traffic.

10. Video submission
-Youtube is a powerful website. By placing videos and links of you site/content you are advertising to a broad audience, gaining you traffic and better rankings.

11. Question Answers
-A old way of spreading links answering questions with links..."You'll find you're answer "your link".

12. Meta Tags
-Provides metadata about the Link/Blog/Etc to Search Engines helping them index your content.

 

Anything that is not natural is frowned upon by Google including backlinks, submissions and keyword stuffing. If you build your site with good content, form your backlinks slowly over time and engage in social media your site will do well in the serps. Google has started laying emphasis on social engagement so be active on Facebook and Twitter with good quality content.