EXPERT CHALLENGE: What link building strategies do YOU think will work after the latest 3/29/2012 Google algorithm change?

[seoeric]

FOR ALL SEO THOUGHT LEADERS...What link building strategies do YOU think will work after the latest 3/29/2012 Google algorithm change?

NOTE: My hope is that the responses left on this thread will ultimately benefit all members of the community and give recognition to the true thought leaders within the SEO space.

That being said, my challenge is a 2 part question:

1. With the 80/20 rule in mind, and in light of recent algorithm changes, what would YOU focus most of your SEO budget on if you had to choose? Let's assume you're in a competitive market (ie #1-5 on page 1 has competitors with 20,000+ backlinks - all ranging from AC Rank 7 to 1). How would you split your total monthly SEO budget as a general rule? Ex) 60% link building / 10% onsite SEO / 10% Social Media / 20% content creation? I realize there are many "it depends" factors but please humor us anyways.

2. Link building appears to have become harder and harder as google releases more and more algorithm changes. For link building, the only true white hat way of proactively generating links (that I know of) is creating high quality content that adds value to customers (ie infographics, videos, etc.), guest blogging, and Press Releases. The con to these tactics is that you are waiting for others to find and pick up your content which can take a VERY long time, so ROI is difficult to measure and justify to clients or C-level management.

That being said, how are YOU allocating your link building budget? Are all of these proactive link building tactics a waste of time now? I've heard it couldn't hurt to still do some of these, but what are your thoughts and what is / isn't working for you?

Here they are:

A.   Using spun articles edited by US based writers for guest blog content

B.   301 Redirects

C.   Social bookmarking

D.   Signature links from Blog commenting

E.   Directory submissions

F.   Video Submissions

G.   Article Directory submissions

H.   Press release directory submissions

I.    Forum Profile Submissions

J.   Forum signature links

K.   RSS Feed submissions

L.   Link wheels

M.  Building links (using scrapebox, senukex, etc.) to pages linked to your money site

N.   Links from privately owned networks (I spoke to an SEO company  that claims to have over 4000 unique domains which he uses to boost rankings for his clients)

O.  Buying Contextual Text Links

All Expert opinions are welcomed and appreciated

[Dr-Pete]

Are you talking about the recent crack-down on link networks? I'm a little confuse, because you mention a 3/29 algorithm change and the question went up on 3/28 (at least here in the US).

I'm actually working on a post about (1), because I think it's almost completely unanswerable without specifics. I've seen people obsess over on-page or build links like crazy and let their on-page turn into a mess, and often those people would be well served to completely switch gears. Take a site that's an absolute mess on-page but has a solid link profile, and fixing on-page issues could work magic for them (for example).

Let's say we're talking about a brand new site, though. It still varies with the goals and budget, but I'd probably say:

• 40% Content
• 30% Link-building
• 20% On-page
• 10% Social

Without some base of solid content, you've got nothing to build links to or promote socially. I'm not saying content is magical - you have to pound the pavement and build those links - but you've got to at least have enough of a site that someone would want to link to it. So, in the beginning, content is still the mainstay. On-page has to start pretty strong - do your keyword research and build a decent, SEO-friendly structure, but then it can level off a little.

[AndySolo]

I'm pretty new to the SEO world, but have been in Marketing for an long time. To me CONTENT is king.

60% Content

20% Social Media

15% Link Building

5%  On-Site

I think you should have excellent and useful content that provides an awesome user experience on your website. If you do that, the link building and Social Media aspects of your marketing will take a life on of there own. I would spend most of my time creating the best possible product, service and content to provide to the public. The public will be happy to share your pages with everyone without you needing to manipulate the system.

I think Social Media has been and will continue to increase in popularity as "votes" for your pages. Plus, SEO aside... it's one of the best ways to reach new customers. Link building has it's place for sure.. it's huge.. but the engines are on a continual effort to make SEO about real user interactions. The engines want to rank sites that are naturally being shared and "voted" upon by real engaged users. On site SEO? is pretty simple and shouldn't take much time, just making sure your targeting good keywords and having those keywords crawled correctly.

Hope my little bit of knowledge was of some help.

[Matthew_Edgar]

I have to agree with the other responses: content is the most important thing because everything centers around that. Even with the recent link changes, that hasn’t changed. If anything, those changes plus Panda, Google+, etc. has made content even more important. You have to have good, unique content that makes your website worth linking to and worth sharing. Any business in any industry can come up with unique content that is worth linking to and worth sharing. It takes hard work, but is well worth the effort.

The problem I have with “link building” is that it becomes a separate beast unto itself where the question becomes “How do I get links?” instead of “How do I get people to know/like/trust my business?” In other words, link building is a tactic of the larger marketing strategy. I actually like Google's recent efforts because it brings link building back to what it should be.

That is how I present link building to my clients. The specific tasks within that then become finding websites for companies or organizations that are in related industries or finding blogs/news organizations talking about that industry. Certainly I automate that discovery as much as I can. Once found, the automating stops because at that point it is about making connections with those companies and organizations. As part of that connection, ask for a link. Doing that can get you a link while also helping the business. Which, really, helping the business is kind of the point of our jobs, right?

Does it take time? You bet. It is a pain and trust me I wish there was an easy way. But there is no quick fix and any quick fix tactic is probably spammy and will be shut down eventually by Google and Bing. So, why take that risk with some of those tactics you mentioned? At best, you are looking at a short term gain and a panic attack in the future when Google and Bing make a change. Why do that?

By treating link building as a form of building connections, links I built five years ago are still around today adding value to my client's websites. The best thing is that links built that way—extending a real world connection—will never be penalized by Google because there is nothing spammy about them. Sure it takes time, but I’ll take the long term effects every day of the week.

My distribution of time is dependent on the exact needs of the site obviously. But in general for a site that has been up and running for a year or two my main focus and effort is on content. From there, my time is divided something like this:

50% Content
20% CRO/Usability
15% Link Building
10% Social
5% On-page optimization