kflanagan - 9:28 am on Sep 18, 2009 (gmt 0)

Although I know what you are saying, the facts are, in certain markets there is no other option than to link build in an aggressive manner. For instance, I know of a competitor in an aggressive market who went from page nowhere to 1st for an EXTREMELY competitive keyword. Their link building strategy was to seed posts out a blog network and also buy PR 5 links from sites that used to be governmental sites and had been bought over to offer links.

Your comment is subjective and context dependent. If Google didn't reward sites that link built in an aggressive manner, then perhaps it would be easier to spend more time in relationship marketing and attract genuine links from partners in your industry. I am not saying I don't do this already. But for the sites I listed (especially the affiliate sites), I am happy to take a few more risks, as all sites in the top spots are doing so already.

My question was not on "should I be building links in this manner", I want to know does a keyword specific penalty stick around for the life time of a site or if I build links with variations of the keyword, can the site come back.

Thanks for your comment though ...