Posted by Tim Grice

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

The title of this post may come across a little contentious, however I hope by the end of it you understand where I am coming from.

Over the years, I have been privileged enough to work with some large businesses that can afford to throw big budgets at online marketing. One of the first tasks I undertake is a meeting to discuss previous strategies. As my main focus is natural search, one of the things I always find interesting is discussing link building strategies carried out by previous agencies and internal SEOs. This can be quite enlightening, but really worrying at the same time, you begin to realise fairly quickly why SEO gets such bad press.

One of the things that always makes my head spin is companies who invest in pumping out online press releases through well-known services for the sheer purpose of building links!

"So, what's your link building strategy?", "Well,