When I entered this line of work I found the hardest part of learning how to build links was figuring out which strategies were sound, and which were a waste of time.
Time could be wasted for a plethora of reasons.
1) The tactic you are using was completely valid two years ago, but now due to changes in algo and environment they are no longer worth your time
2) They are so despised by fellow webmasters that they may not be worth your time
And the list goes on.
I decided to poll other SEOs to find out which tactics they found to be a waste of time, or even despised. This is not to say that some of these tactics do not have some legitimacy in some form or market, these are simply the tactics that rattle your colleagues, and which should make you think twice.
(Big thanks to Chris Winfield and David Harry for helping me get responses on Twitter and Plurk)
Pretty easy to see that link requests and comment spam are both despised and found to be a waste of time by many SEOs.
Does this mean they are completely useless?
No. Or they wouldn’t be utilized.
The point is to look at your individual campaign and decide which tactics to use. Think twice about how to utilize link building. If you are creating useful comment threads with links that the community finds useful you are simply doing a white hat acceptable method of comment spam. If you are sending personalized emails to market publishers offering quality original content in exchange for links you are simply using a more personal method of automated link requests. Just think about your strategy in terms of your goals.
Remember SEOs aren’t just your colleagues. They are also often the webmasters linking to you, or that you will be approaching for links, so use this peak into their mind to decide which strategies you should think twice about.