Link Building this week (Oct. 5)

I noticed two subjects got a lot of attention during the past few days. One of them is the good old paid link discussion that has been going on since, well, since like forever.
Aaron Wall explains How You Can Rent a Million Links and Stay Under the Radar and even Forbes (out of all websites) covers the paid link debate. Rand Fishkin reacts to this post by outing several websites that sell links without complying to Google’s paid link policy. I don’t know his real motive for publicizing these websites, but I certainly will monitor both these domains and the websites they link to during the past few weeks. Just to see where penalties suddenly appear and where not.

The other subject is a much better discussion; it’s the debate of quality links. While Julie Joyce explains Why Relevant Links are Irrelevant, Debra Mastaler adds that a link is Sometimes Just a Damn Link. The third woman in this list is GoogleLady, who made the Top 6 List Why Link Building is Harder This Year. If it wasn’t for Justilien Gaspard’s post about Link Value (part one), this discussion would be a ‘Girl Power’ discusussion.

And also:

• Newbie? Check out this impressive list of different link tactics. Also a great read for more experienced link marketers. After reading this post, make sure to read
• Michael Martinez’ post about stupid link building ideas for amateurs as well.
• Joost de Valk explains how link data is being used over time.
• For once and for all, spammy backlinks can’t hurt you.
• Stoney DeGreyter mentions that Reciprocal Links Still aren’t Dead.