Penguin 2.1 has caused quite a shakeup in the SEO world these last few weeks. Launched not long after Google’s Hummingbird update, there seems to be fewer people talking about this then there was for the introduction of Penguin or even its version predecessor, Penguin 2.0.

Though I previously shared that I had a lot of success on the back of helping people get over Penguin 2.0 – especially since I own Penguin2.com – I’ve yet to write anything about Penguin 2.1 until now. The reason is simple: I wanted to be absolutely sure I was giving the right advice on what to do after this update. After looking at hundreds of sites in my own network (yes, hundreds) I certainly am now.

We’re well underway with our Triple X Niche case study (introduction post here) and we now have over 20 ongoing case studies on the forums. They’ve racked up close to 15,000 views so far and there are hundreds of posts to read. Suffice to say I’m really excited about what we have going on here and I hope that you’re going to be sticking with us for the journey.

One thing I promised to do when introducing Mr.V into the case study was to answer his questions and queries in public. Without Mr.V I could only guess the kind of things that people would struggle with on their own niche site journey, but his questions give me true insights into how I can help more people. My aim is to personally help him become one of the top marketers online, almost superhuman if you like, and give you the knowledge to do the same.

November 1st is now upon us, so that means it’s the launch of the Triple X Niche Site Case Study. For any of you who missed the unveiling post, this is a niche site case study with a twist. Three people (Myself, Diggy, and Vladimir a.k.a Mr.V) will be tackling the same niche and trying to make as much money from it as possible with brand new websites. The twist is that I can only focus on social media, Diggy can only focus on SEO and Vladimir can focus on anything but he is a beginner to building websites.

We believe this has the potential to be the biggest and best niche site case study ever shared on the internet. We even solicited your feedback in the original post to make sure we give this every opportunity to be as useful for you – the reader – as possible. Thanks to all of you who left a comment (there are over 450 of them right now!).

One of the things that undoubtedly helped me to succeed online was seeing that other people were having success. It wasn’t so much specific examples – not many people shared them when I was starting out to be honest – but just knowing that someone had figured out this making money on the internet thing showed me that I could do it too.

It’s natural to get inspired by the success story of others. I remember hearing about a grandmother who had been writing her whole life but was always scared to get feedback on her work. After finally publishing her book well past the age of 80, she said it was the best thing she’s ever done. It became quite the internet sensation as it really sunk in the idea of “it’s never too late”.

That’s a slight lie. They’re impossible to stop, but you can reduce sharing by almost 100%. That’s exactly what I did when it came to people pirating my own software and I’ll show you how. But first, a scenario: You’re with your child (or niece, nephew or young cousin) at home and find yourself needing a few hours break to get some work done. Said youngster tells you about a movie they’ve been dying to watch and you see it as the perfect opportunity to get some peace for a few hours. You begin the online hunt to find it.

It’s not on Netflix, which you pay for monthly. iTunes doesn’t seem to have it either. Hulu looks promising, but then you get an error saying it’s not available in your current region. Then, what’s that? A Youtube link for that exact movie. 2 hours long, and in perfect HD quality at that.

Do you click play?

The National Speakers Association has to be one of the best run organisations in the whole of America. Huh, you thought I was talking about the government agency spying on the world? Aaaah my bad. That’s awkward. The NSA (not the James Bond type) were mentioned in a podcast I recently listened to by a newcomer on the NYT Bestsellers list, author Jay Baer.

It’s not the first time I’ve listened to podcasts on the topic. In fact, I’ve been overloading myself with information on getting published, book covers, finding an editor and whether to skip publishers entirely and just go it alone. When I turned down Viral Marketing for Dummies with Wiley last year, I told myself that there would one day be another time and a place for me to write a book.

A few weeks ago I did my first ever Webinar in the marketing world after being asked to speak to members of a community called Link Club. This is 80% of what I spoke about on that live webinar, replayed for you here in a new video. The reason I’ve taken 20% out is simply to give their audience something unique as a thank you for motivating me to put together a webinar in the first place. I don’t think it would be fair to repeat things word for word here.

That being said, there’s still a ton of stuff I hope you can take away from this. Nobody on the internet is sharing more than what I’m giving you in my latest posts, and especially this one where I share:

• My favourite place for getting SEO case studies I don’t see anyone talking about
• Exact backlinks to one of my websites
• How I abused Google’s Freshness algorithm (and my traffic jumped up)
• How I rank for any phrase I want in iTunes

I’ve covered some pretty controversial topics in recent weeks when it comes to SEO. Revealing I’m a scammer, showing how freshness is being abused and then doing a follow-up blog post to show the same again. Though at times it may seem like I’m being a bit harsh on Google, I have acknowledged that the job their staff have must be one of the hardest in the world. Trying to defend yourself against thousands (millions?) of people who are focused on nothing more than gaming their system on a daily basis.

I still feel though that the search results from 2011 and 2012 are just far better than what we’ve seen in 2013. Google should not be getting tricked by people simply changing the date on a blog post and thinking that it’s suddenly fresh and deserves better rankings. There’s also no doubt in my mind that Youtube has a huge algorithmic preference over other video platforms like Vimeo, Wistia & DailyMotion, no matter what Google say about keeping things fair.