Thanks for stopping by. I really like the new design of SEOWizz. I have read Rands & Aaron’s thoughts on this before and would agree with Aaron. The web has evolved and some markets are just too competitive in terms of their linking i.e. paid links. I think buying links is a required skill these days, along with other areas that may be considered gray hat. There is just no getting away from it in some markets. It also brings up the whole conversation on what links are good and which should be considered bad. I think it’s quite an hazy area sometimes and SEO consultants love to highlight they are pure white hat, but nearly everything you do can be considered gray hat.

I agree on strategic partnerships, but they can be difficult at times. In some competitive markets it can be quite difficult to find any that make sense, it can also be really time consuming and although better for the client in the long term, all clients want to see results in the short term. But I definitely agree, they would produce great results. It’s why an affiliate strategy can yield such great links.

For me, so much depends on the market. If you are competing for insurance, accommodation, home business etc, it’s almost impossible not to become aggressive with your links, if you really want to compete.

If you are in a more niche area, there could be a lot more opportunities for inventive ways to generate real world links.

I think we share something in common though, it’s something that is always on my mind …. !!!

Nice post with some useful thoughts. Link building has been weighing heavily on my mind recently, especially how we apply it to a clients campaigns. The usual methods seem to becoming less effective ie article marketing, on top of this social links, in my opinion are of less worth than a no follow. As we are taking on more high profile clients it is becoming evident that the mainstream competition are buying links. I have read a lot on purchasing links, their hundreds of opinions out there. Rand at SEOmoz states it’s not worth it but claims his risk tolerance on a scale of 1 to 10 is zero, making it clear if he wasn’t bothered about a level of risk he would do it. Aaron Wall at SEObook almost promotes buying a few links to help boost your business, as long as you buy smart.

I fully agree with you that link building now needs to focus on being natural, from the page it’s on from the position it is in, to the anchor text you use and to the rate the profile is grown. On top of this your site needs to have solid content and resources as I feel low quality sites will eventually start being, those that are manually link building anyway.

Sorry for the long comment, I clear need to publish something to get my thoughts out.

One last thing though, we have recently been finding a lot of benefit in creating strong link partnerships and have seen significant increase in rank and overall search traffic after the implementation of solid partnerships.

Something to consider a bit more.

Thanks for the detailed comment. I think large sites that built links using large link pages benefit because of age and authority. I do think if you did this a couple of years back, you are probably still reaping some of the rewards but if you started trying to catch them using the same tactic it would be a dead end (not in all cases). There are still some cases where it makes sense to grab a link from a related site in your market. But I feel, it should be done in a manner that is more affiliate related i.e. maybe you advertise each others services on relevant pages.
The problem with most link builders is they get a couple of keywords and then go out trying to get all their links with those keywords in, from do follow sites, as that is what they have been told to do. It doesn’t look natural to just have the same keywords and most sites will get nofollow links, since half the web is that way now Building a natural link profile is a skill a lot of people haven’t mastered. I remember reading a post from an SEO guy where advocated NEVER building links with “click here” or your brand name, just use keywords. That is totally the wrong strategy to use.