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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