Prior to Penguin, I had begun a link building campaign of sorts for a tourism bureau. All it was designed to do was leverage a wealth of relevant link opportunities that were right under our noses...the bureau's own members. These restaurants, hotels, attractions, etc are extremely relevant web sites with respect to the tourism bureau's target and niche.
The links were to be in the form of image badges stating "Proud member of..." with brand-only alt text and title tags. I will focus on keeping these links a reasonable percentage of the overall domains linking into the site, I will vary the alt text throughout, and cultivate the links slowly over a 5-month period.
But since the bureau's site already drives traffic to these individual member sites, the links we cultivate will end up being reciprocal. Even though they are natural in the purpose they serve, should we be worried, and consider abandoning the program?
