Tactics don’t last forever

Marketers have a long history of breaking their toys.

As soon as a tactic is proven to work and becomes commonplace, it’s often easily abused, causing the gatekeepers (i.e. Google) to ignore the tactic or penalize it.

Exact match anchor text, for example, used to be a ranking factor. Now it’s not. And the reason it’s not is because marketers tried to game the system.

This reminds me of something else I read that highlights an important point: a tactic that ‘works’ is one that can be easily gamed.

And a tactic that can be easily gamed is one that will easily spread. And, as such, soon chastened or abolished.

Which is why it’s best to lean on strategy, not tactics. Because, over a long enough time frame, only one of them will get you somewhere you actually want to be.

…

Halo fans will remember the infamous noob combo—an effective tactic to get an easy kill—one that quickly caught on. Same concept. Once Bungie spotted the bug in the system, they altered the plasma pistol in subsequent games.