A bunch of my sites have taken a big hit like many of the people here on this forum. Linking techniques that I have been using for years are now not working and are a waste of time. What are some things I can do to help get my sites back on googles good side?
So what techniques have you been using? But to point you in the right direction for your question: Read SEOmoz (blog and YOUmoz User Blog) and you'll find good strategies (that don't involve spamming) for gaining backlinks (not making, but gaining). You'll be safe then. Make sure your "on-page" is good, too. Think "HVO" (Human Visitor Optimisation, not SE).
Vary your anchor text in your existing link building schemes, by a lot (50% of links should just be urls or "click here"). Concentrate on higher quality links.
Google Penguin will look for the ratio your website has between low quality or high quality back links if your website have a number of more low quality back links you can either remove some of them low quality back links or you can add more quality back links for your website in order to keep high quality back links high.