When it comes to link building many of our clients understand that it is very important, but do not fully understand the complexities of it and also the drawbacks through doing ‘bad’ link building practices.It can be very frustrating for clients who can see their competitors out ranking them and it is in these instances that fast results are desired and when manipulative ‘short term link building techniques can be seen as a good idea.Link Building TacticsThere are many good link building tactics that are open to SEO’s if they are done correctly. With the recent updates in 2011 and 2012 by Google, it clearly shows that they are very keen to really filter out poor link building strategies and this means that even good link building practices, if they are abused or done in the wrong way, can lead to penalties.Below is a list of the most commonly used link building tactics that are widely used by SEO companies:- Article marketing- Guest Blogging- Blog commenting- Press releases- Forum posting- Social bookmarking- Citations- Directories- Content marketingThe list goes on, but these are the key ones.So Which Ones Actually Work?All of them will work to some degree and again it is very important to remember it is how they are done that will determine if they add value or not.The key to successful link building is diversity to your link profile and this means utilising all the above link building techniques into a strategy. It is no good just using one or two, as this will create a pattern which is quite easy for Google’s Algorithm to pick up. Also keeping the anchor text diverse is key to not triggering a pattern in your link profile, so keep the anchor text terms broad.For example if the only types of links you build are blog comments and you use the same anchor text each time, then it will not take a very advanced algorithm to detect this pattern would it?So All We Need Are Broad Anchor Text Links And Links From Varied Domains? Yes…To a degree. One key aspect in search engine optimisation that is becoming more important is relevancy and this means that the links you acquire should (where possible) be from related industries. Again Google’s algorithm is becoming more advanced and is now detecting keywords on a webpage from where the link is coming from, meaning the more relevant a website and web page, then the more value that link will have. If you keep this in mind for all the links you build then you will soon build up a very strong link profile.Final Word While the algorithms do change on the major search engines, it is very important to remember that some aspects do not change. A key aspect of this is to be seen not to manipulate the search results and by utilising the above points, you safe guard your website for the future as you are actively building a link profile with little pattern and is highly relevant to your industry.