I’d focus on what links do count and share how and where I find them. All the link building tactics we’re fond of still work: reciprocal links, three way links, using article directories, adding your site to a million general directories, and even paid links, why ‘even’? because everybody is scared whether this is the right way to get links today as it was announced google doesn’t think so and even more this search engine will be punishing such guys who sell links but by the present day it’s only a theory. All links count in some way, even those cloaked in things like nofollow, robot.txt, or a third party tracking code. These types of links may not be SEO friendly, but they do work and depending on where they sit, can go a long way toward boosting your visibility.

Here’s the short list of guidelines I follow when building links to influence rank:

- Place links on indexed pages

- Use multiple variations of anchor text and point to optimized internal pages

- Links should go from thematic sites

- A page where your link is placed must contain no more than 50 links

One more thing is PR. Many webmasters require PR on pages where their link will go from. I don’t think that PR is so important nowadays I personally think that the linking page must be indexed in Google and if this page does not have PR be sure it would get some one day. When I receive link proposals PR is the last thing which I’m looking on when link exchange, the more important thing is for example google indexation, number of links on the page where my link will be placed or the age of the domain of my potential link partner.

Over the years, I’ve found the challenge in linking is less about the tactic and more about using smart SEO on quality resources.

Remember: all links count.