Modern SEOs should focus on thought leadership, building connections with customers and partners, and creating high-quality content to naturally attract links, rather than exploiting systems or manipulating people. Link building should not be seen as an isolated SEO tactic but as part of an integrated marketing strategy to engage audiences and grow a brand.

1. How SEO's should really build
links.
@gaelbreton

2. "This shit doesn't work in Hungary" Disclaimer
This is the correlation between local links and high rankings in google (from august
2011). Internet has no borders and Google understood it.

3. SEO's are hated in most other marketing circles
We've been gaming the system for so long and destroyed so many great
opportunities. Time to work with people and not cheat them.

4. We broke the directories

5. We broke comment systems
79 billion spam comments prevented and that's only a small fraction of the spam...

6. We broke forums
Read how forum spam ruined a great business here: http://bit.ly/Vb9HLM

7. And due to that Google had to fight back
We only deserve what happened to SEO.

8. Modern day SEOs are Inbound Marketers
We need to stop thinking how we can exploit the system and more how we can
engage real people into our brand story through all the mainstream channels.

9. Great but what about the links?
@gaelbreton

10. Invest in thought leadership
Not just for links and SEO but for traffic, brand awareness, lead gen, sales,
recruiting, company valuation...

11. Case study #1: superfoodprofiles.com

12. Case study #2: entrepreneuronfire.com

13. Build links with your imagery
Do people steal your content? Upload your image sitemap into imageraider.com
and make sure they give you an attribution link.

14. Build links when you sleep
If you produce quality informational content in your niche you can be here at the
right time in the right place with Zemanta.com. avg $14/link.

15. Connect with the people that already like you
If people decided to follow you, they most likely like what you do. They also list their
websites on Twitter. Use Followerwonk.com to connect.

16. Help the customers of your customers
Then help them out by finding out about their lives and connect them with non
competing services when it applies. use inboxq.com to find questions asked by

17. Use your email list to build links
Same with your email list. You can find plenty of quality link opportunities using the
fullcontact.com api.

18. Connect with the people that you pay money to
Connect with your vendors, suppliers, employees, clients etc. These are all great
link opportunities.

19. Connect with the people that spread stories
And spoil them.

20. Make everything your company do an occasion
to build links
Our internship program got us more links and better links than any other link
campaign we've done.

21. Or just treat everyone you work with kindly
Freelancer write unpaid blog posts about their experience with us.

22. Conclusion
@gaelbreton

23. This is not just SEO
If you do all these tactics just for links you're a moron. SEO is not a stand alone skill
anymore, it's a framework for marketing.

24. Break the barrier between social, PR, SEO...
And become a real marketing department that gets links, leads, customers, brand
champions, referals and other real business metrics.

25. The best link building are not built by SEO's
Did Red Bull sent someone in space for links? Nope but they built almost 100,000
from 12,000 domains. at $50/lrd that's a link building budget of $600,000.

26. That's all folks
@gaelbreton