Stop Building Links During Reconsideration Request?

[RiceMedia]

We had a message in webmaster tools to say our site had 'unnatural links' pointing towards it.

I investigated and found a number of sites where we had uploaded articles, containing links, had been de-indexed.  As such we have suffered a few drops in rankings.

I have submitted a reconsideration request and I'd like to get on with recovering any lost ground.  However, I am wondering whether it's best to cease any link building activity whilst the reconsideration request is processed.

Please do let me know your thoughts and experiences on continuing to build links after submitting a reconsideration request.

[ClickConsult]

Should you continue link building? Yes.

Should you continue the same strategy as you previously had adapted? No.

Look at building quality, natural links, it's more important that you build these links now than ever to be honest.

Good luck!

[Carson-Ward]

In a nutshell, this is great advice.

I would suggest reading this post I wrote about the same warning in webmaster tools, as it sounds very relevant to what you are experiencing. There is no point in submitting a reconsideration request until the bad links are removed. You can continue to build links, but not in ways that add zero value to users.

[RiceMedia]

Thanks for the great advice both, much appreciated!

That's an awesome post as well Carson, thank you very much for sharing.  I think we are going to have to change our techniques - the point about link building formerly being the easiest part of your job really hit home with me.  It seems that link building is going to be a much more laborious process.

As far as agencies go, it's going to take a great deal more in the way of time and resources to service clients.  At the moment, it seems that the only way forward for the average agency is to employ more staff or out-source elements of the link building process.  Either that or SEO simply becomes much more expensive.

With that in mind, do you think the days of local businesses ranking alongside high-street brands on P1 may be coming to an end?