Are there *truly* any white-hat link-building tactics?

[jcolman]

With our new knowledge -- yielded from J.C. Penney, Forbes, Overstock, content farms, et al -- that the link graph/link profile can be algorithmically mined by search engines to uncover non-natural patterns of links occuring over time, is there any level of link-building that is safe to engage in?

If so, then what are those "bright white"-hat tactics that are 100% safe for a site to use?

[moldybacon]

I have to disagree with your .gov comment. I've seen a lot of.gov/.edu with autoapprove comments and the amount of OBL's on page is ridiculous. Sending an obvious signal to google because a large majority of the pages are so spammy.

However if you can get a link from a .gov with moderated comments.. fair play.

[UPform5]

So I'm curious: in your experience, what are the brightest white hat link-building tactics that present the least amount of risk? - The ones presented here at SEOmoz are the best linkbuilding practices I know so far ^_^

[jcolman]

Hey UPform5, I think you're on the right track here, but the Google guidelines are a bit... blurry when it comes to tactics.

They say things like "[Don't create] Links intended to manipulate PageRank" - well, like eyepaq states, this is precisely what any link-building program ultiamtely wants to accomplish.

So I'm curious: in your experience, what are the brightest white hat link-building tactics that present the least amount of risk?

[UPform5]

Hi Eyepaq,

I beg to disagree. And I think most SEO's will agree

That "LINKS CAN BE BUILT AS LONG AS IT FOLLOWS GOOGLES GUIDELINES"

As for what is really a true white-hat linkbuilding I would define it as:

Marketing your website without encroaching on the rules set by Google.

So there.

^_^

[eyepaq]

Any link you place on another site to your website in order to help it rank is not natural. All social network accounts you build and setup a link to your website is not natural. Everything you do on the SEO side as far as links is not natural and for this reason you can call it black hat (even if I don't believe in white hat and black hat - all we do is black or shades of black. some are running on the edge some stay in the grey area with the seatbelt on but is the same thing overall).

And since I am off subject so far my opinion with the question is: links from gov domains or with "just too much authority" can be considered bullet proof as far as link source no matter what those links ended up there.