What determines whether a tactic is sustainable? Look at it from the search engine algorithm designer's standpoint. Whether someone continues to use your service depends on whether you can consistently deliver relevant results to the visitor. If you can't, or some other search engine can do a better job, your value as a service diminishes greatly. You can join the pile of search has-beens like Alta Vista and Lycos.
Google pours tons of effort into refining their algorithms to distinguish between good content and attempts to game the system. Chances are, if you are using tactics to game, you're going to get caught and get whacked. That quick bump to the top all of the sudden becomes a rapid slide to the bottom, and even if you clean up your act, it's a very long climb from the basement.
A very good case-in-point can be found in P.J. Fusco's SEO Q&A column from today. She takes on the "build or buy" question for inbound links to your website. She writes:
If this is where your tactics ultimately land you, then you're not practicing sustainable SEO. She goes on to write:
Imagine where your site could be positioned in the search engines if you took the link-buying budget and developed a widget that helped build links to your site year after year. Or suppose you took that money and invested in creating content that repeatedly added valuable links to your site? Blogs remain a relatively inexpensive way to not only create link-worthy content, but connect with your customers in an entirely different voice.
That's pretty much what Compendium is all about... providing an application that companies can use to do sustainable SEO through blogging.
I would encourage you to read her entire column. It also contains some interesting information on the adoption and usefulness of the canonical link tag, which is something we introduced on new blog templates about seven months ago.
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