brinked - 10:02 pm on Jan 1, 2013 (gmt 0)

What google is doing is devaluing links that webmasters can take or buy easily.

Google is putting more emphasis on links that are "earned", usually from sites that are of high quality and that google truly feels does not sell links or give away links cheaply. Anchor text is not as big a factor as it used to be and google is getting better at detecting natural anchors.

As I have switched over to app development, I have actually learned so much about marketing. There is no SEO in mobile apps in the traditional sense. My first app became the number 1 app of its kind simply because I dedicated time and resources into its usefulness and its design. I took feedback from popular social network sites and they ate it up. It spread like wildfire without me needing to do a single thing. The time and resources I put into making a great app was much less of that if I was to do a link building campaign.

You simply can not build links on a massive scale anymore by manipulating google. To get the big number of links you need, you need people to spread the word for you.