Updated 9/21/2013

As an industry, our position on what makes a quality link has changed over the years, specifically in the past 18 months, and most tactics have followed suit. The culprit for shifting our paradigm has been the Panda and Penguin updates that have made valuable content and natural, quality link signals a necessity.

With this push towards the complete removal of manipulative practices, in addition to an increase in the correlation of social signals and rankings – and I say correlation, because that is what it is for now – SEOs are left with a smaller tool set of tactics that work to produce link signals that are beneficial to a site.

In short, the gap between the links that actually work to increase authority and what Google says works is closing. And, if updates continue on this track, those opting for quick and easy links are going to find themselves booted.

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Guest blogging, while becoming overplayed, is still a great way to build relevant links from authority websites within a niche. Every site, from the one-man show to the enterprise level news blog, is in need of content, and many will jump on the opportunity to add content to their site, as long as it is unique, thought-provoking or relevant to their readers.

Although finding and identifying link opportunities – while matching unique, thoughtful topics to go with each guest post prospect – isn’t the most difficult part of link building, it is one of the most time-consuming.

In this post, I’ll be going over the surprisingly simple to the mind-blowing gems of discovering new link opportunities.
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Guest blogging is the most widely known tactic to legitimately build links from authority websites; however, while guest posting has its benefits, it also has its negative connotations.

As inbound marketers, we need to not just get ahead of the curve, but stay ahead. What I mean is that smart – or scared – webmasters will soon quit accepting low-value works, yielding to columnists over one and done hits.

Take State of Search for example. To preserve quality, Bas van den Beld has eliminated guest post requests in general, opting only for guest posts from people that they approach, and not the other way around, which can be chalked up to spam tactics and pitches that have polluted the industry as a whole.

So, as more sites take on practices like State of Search, where will that leave the rest of the SEO industry that leans too heavily on guest blogging?

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A few weeks ago, Derek Halpern over at Social Triggers, wrote a great piece on persuading people you don’t know to help you, aka getting links.

In short, Derek used the incentives brought to light in the popular book Freakonomics – economic, social and moral – then translated them into ways your outreach emails can provide value and increase responses.

Similar to Derek, I’m a fan of the thought process behind the Freakonomics’ incentives and use them for all facets of link building.

One of the most effective areas of these incentives falls on link builders themselves.
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