LifeinAsia - 4:30 pm on Jun 26, 2008 (gmt 0)

The problem with this attitude is that it's the way to lose the race. Site 1 rolls along happily getting 'natural' links without asking. Site 2 aggressively asks for links and ends up with 'natural' links plus some number as a result of their link building efforts. Site 2 gets higher rankings in Google.

Possibly, but links are not the only things that Google considers. So while site #2 is spending all its time agressively chasing down links, I'm busy developing original content and systems and other reasons why visitors want to come to my site and webmasters would want to link naturally.

So yes, site #2 may end up with a few more links than me (although it's really tough to get people to link to him since he doesn't have much content and people don't really like his site), but I have many more pages, many more visitors, and still better rankings because the other factors in Google's algo outweigh the minor advantage site #2 holds in links.

Now, I admit that it should not be an either/or situation- obviously you should do other things besides just link building. But the point I'm trying to make is to analyze the returns for the time/energy spent on link building, content development, blogging, etc. and focus on the most productive ones.

Getting back on topic, use the same analysis to figure out which link building methods provide the best returns for the time/effort spent in your particular case. What works for some people may not work for others simply because their niche is compeltely different and the behavior of of webmasters/visitors is different. For example, if you have an "adult" themed site, it's highly unlikely that focusing on getting links from .edu and .gov sites will be the most productive use of your time! :)