Face it. It's over. Google has said over and over again that self manipulating your incoming links with garbage directories that no one uses and exchanging links with unrelated, no traffic websites will do nothing for you. Natural links. That's it. No more shortcuts. No more tricks. You either provide content that people are looking for and market it well, or spend money to advertise. There are no other ways. So just stop acting like it's 1995 and wasting time doing everything under the sun to avoid putting in the work and creating something worthwhile.
Google is getting more and more strict against link spamming and black hat SEO methods and there main concern is quality content so be careful with your SEO strategics.
I don't think so . if you get related and high page rank directories backlinks. you still get result.
Can you name any high rank directories? You may get a link, but people don't use directories. They have no traffic. Directories themselves are manipulated inbound links, the very thing I'm saying is a waste of time. Google knows. I've never been on Facebook and have someone post "Hey, look at this new Directory that I found". People link to engaging content. Period. Google likes actual, natural links. When bloggers and other websites start linking to directories because they just have so many interesting websites listed, you may have a point. But until then. It's just a link. Not a helpful one. Directories were dead a long time ago. I don't understand what else needs to be said. Google rewards natural links. It knows about directories, article marketing, link exchanges, link hubs, comment links, and so on. And it likes it best when someone links to your website in the context of their content. Period. And you can't fake or manipulate that.
Link building is not dead , but its method has been changes after Penguin update. Google willing for theme thematic inbound & ou bound links not on the link count and link from the similar sites. now a days guest post is one of the best method to promote your sites
If the contents of those site are ok, and have organic visitors, then those are link building is not dead. The fact is actually the organic visitors, nothing else.
Of course, link farms have never REALLY been a good way to boost SEO, even in the past. Sure you could do some black hat to milk some money on a domain, but you could never build a sustainable business from it. It's like anything, it's about the concept, creativity, and how hard you work at it that will truely make you successful. Props to Google for encouraging that and further flushing black hat dumpster sites down the toilet.
I think you are completely wrong. Link building is not and never will be dead. If you do it properly, it is impossible for Google to tell the difference between you building links, and natural links from other webmasters. I still think EVERY link is counted as a vote.
Is not black or white, some sites can follow all Google guidelines and be slapped while others used all dupe content and tons of blackhat links and are still there. You just need to have luck and of course an old project. Nowadays, a fresh project means spam to Google until some newspapers talk about you.
Unfortunately high quality site is not doing link exchange and those high quality directory no more active