Link Building in 2014

[KarenJames]

Hi everyone.
We like most are struggling to link build this year in line with Google guidelines. First step for us is a back link clean up then a really thorough competitor analysis to see what the competitors have that we may wish to emulate. We also ask the clients to provide us with information about their associations, memberships, suppliers, partners etc so we can see if there is synergy to get them a decent link from sites in their immediate orbit.
After that we produce some excellent content but getting it published, particularly with a follow link, is just getting harder and harder. We are also a PR agency so we encourage the clients to 'think out of the box' with regard to a PR campaign. It is fair to say that most clients don't understand what we are trying to do and don't have the stomach to be different.
I was wondering if anyone else did anything different, any fabulous ideas we are missing?
Also is anyone still submitting content to Ezine articles? They are incredibly picky about unique content, grammar etc but is it/will it  still be grouped in with the article link farms?
Any advice much appreciated.
Thanks Karen

[KarenJames]

Thanks Andy for the infographic point, it is something we have not not done yet but we are conducting a client survey and have generated a lot of good feedback that lends itself to this approach. I guess for all of us the issue is one of client buy in. We are very good at coming up with the ideas and carrying out the campaigns and outreach in house but if we need to go and stand on the street corner for a few days talking to end users that has to be paid for.

How does everyone else manage this?

Tom Roberts - I would appreciate your views on 'green light' back links for 2014 excluding  Ezine.

Thanks a million everyone. K

[Andy-Halliday]

The only other thing we do is infographics, whether you would class that as part of a content strategy or not is a different matter, but these usually have some great results, but like every GIGO comes to mind, to actually make a infographic work, firstly you need to do the research, and get some interesting and relevant facts in there, and then spend a lot of time trying to publishing it, speaking with blog owners, news sites etc.

Our last infographic we managed to get a link of mashable.com and I believe there DA is around 94 ish so was worth all the time and investment in making it look good, have decent content within it.

If your client isnt all ready doing infographics I would recommend them

[TomRayner]

Hi Karen

I'll try and come back and leave you a more detailed reply but regarding EzineArticles:

Yes, they are article link farms. They are totally worthless for SEO now and so under no circumstances should you be sending your content there, or any other article directories.