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Is Link Building Really Dead?

Is link building dead in the post-Penguin world? That’s a question that’s been consuming  the SEO world since Google’s latest update was unleashed back in April. It’s also a   question we posed to the panelists at the recent CAP SEO Roundtable called, How Gaming Affiliates Can Recover from Penguin.

Here’s what Bastian Grimm; Kay Schaefer; and Dave Snyder had to say about the current state of link building.

Good Link Building is Not Dead

One thing that all of our panelists agreed on is that link building isn’t dead at all. In fact, most of them agree that a bit of housecleaning in this department was long overdue.

They all pointed to the fact that what Penguin really punished was lazy link building that never really did much for customers in the first place.

Kay Schaefer of KSOM had this to when asked if old school link development is dead:

That depends on what is meant by ‘old school link development’? A lot of people think if they want to be number one in casino poker they need link with the link text casino poker. If this is ‘old school link development,’ yes it’s dead.

He went on to say:

To put it another way, if ‘old school’ means relying on one thing which  works until a specific time – it should have been dead along time ago.

What else do these SEO experts have to say about Penguin? Check out Why Google   Created Penguin.

 Quality Still Rules

Another topic our panel agreed on was the need for white hat SEO over automated link building software and apps. Here’s what Dave Snyder had to say with regards to white hat, versus lazy link building:

What Penguin killed was lazy link building. The same things that have always worked for quality link building still work. What it’s done is it’s taken away the automated link building factor…it’s taken away the ability for anyone who doesn’t know SEO to come in and build links.

He goes on to say that while those black hat methods still work, they’re just not as sustainable as they once were.

Unless your idea of a good time is rebuilding your page rankings from scratch every few months, you’ll definitely want to embrace Google-approved, white hat SEO techniques like guest blogging and creating shareable content.

None of this is easy, but it’s definitely sustainable.

Do you think that link building is dead? Post up your thoughts in the comments section below this article.