Infographic: When Link Building Turns Into A Linkpocalypse

If you want to succeed with gaining search traffic through SEO, building links is one of the most important ranking factors that can help you. But go too far, and the search police might crack down on you. How do you avoid a disaster?

To help, the folks at DNA created a “Link Apocalypse” infographic summarizing some recent missteps in building links and the consequences, including Google even punishing itself for buying paid links (click to enlarge it):

A note about the first example. iAcquire is called a “gray-hat” firm (well, the “grey-hat” spelling is used). It’s unclear what a “gray hat” firm is supposed to be — one that does both black hat and white hat tactics? If so, that’s probably a fair assessment of iAcquire at the time.

iAcquire never claimed to be working with DBCC, but it was banned by Google soon after the DBCC situation emerged and later blogged about dropping paid links as part of its SEO process, which — assuming it’s doing no other things that violate Google’s guidelines — would make it a white hat firm.

Want the infographic for yourself? You’ll find it here: The Link Apocalypse. You can also learn more about some of the cases mentioned in our stories below:

• Google Penalizes Google Japan For Buying Links
• New York Times Exposes J.C. Penney Link Scheme That Causes Plummeting Rankings in Google
• Google’s Action Against Paid Links Continues: Overstock & Forbes Latest Casualties; Conductor Exits Brokering Business
• After Google Warning, Forbes Comes Oh So Close To Cleaning Up Its Paid Links
• Another Company Outed for Paid Links: Sequoia-Backed Milanoo
• New York Times Continues Paid Link Outing Stories, Looks At Online Flowers Industry
• 90 Days Later, J.C. Penney Regains Its Google Rankings
• What Can We Learn From The Latest Brand To Be Called Out For Paid Links?
• Google Lifts Ban On iAcquire; Company Blogs Of Being Reformed
• Google Reminds Webmasters: Selling Links Can Lead To PageRank Penalty
• Google Chrome’s Paid Link Penalty Now Lifted
• Google Launches “Penguin Update” Targeting Webspam In Search Results
• Will 2013 Bring A Paid Link Resurgence?