Useful Links For Link Builders: Our Top 10 Link Week Columns For 2014

When Google’s head of webspam, Matt Cutts, kicked off 2014 by denouncing guest blogging as a link building strategy, link builders knew they were going to be in for an interesting year.

And indeed they were right. We saw major brands like Expedia and eBay get hit with manual penalties, and many speculated that these were related to spammy link building practices. Google also released Penguin 3.0, the sixth update to its spam-filtering algorithm which targets (among other things) websites with “unnatural” backlink profiles.

All this news led to increased anxiety among link builders, as evidenced by our most popular Link Week columns this year. Three of the top 10 articles addressed concerns that link building was dead or dying — or, at the very least, a waste of time. Readers also wanted more information on how to avoid penalties, both by practicing ethical link building and protecting themselves against negative SEO.

For that information and more, check out Search Engine Land’s top link building columns of 2014:

1. 11 Reasons Link Building Is A Futile Waste Of Time — And One Big Reason It Isn’t by Eric Ward. Published on 1/29/14. 1.3K social shares across all platforms.
2. Google’s Matt Cutts: Link Building Is Sweat Plus Creativity by Jon Ball. Published on 7/25/14. 1.4K social shares across all platforms.
3. Yahoo Says Goodbye, ZEEF Says Hello by Eric Ward. Published on 10/7/14. 950 social shares across all platforms.
4. Will Link Building Soon Be A Thing Of The Past? by Casie Gillette. Published on 1/25/14. 1.4K social shares across all platforms.
5. Negative SEO From Links — What Can You Do If You’re Hit? by John Lincoln. Published on 5/20/14. 1K social shares across all platforms.
6. Preparing For The Link Apocalypse That May Or May Not Be Coming by Nate Dame. Published on 1/3/14. 1.2K social shares across all platforms.
7. Why SEOs Need To Stop Automating Email Outreach For Links by Matthew Barby. Published on 10/8/14. 1.1K social shares across all platforms.
8. Food For Thought About Link Building: Some Tasty Tidbits by Eric Ward. Published on 4/22/14. 630 social shares across all platforms.
9. 21 Link Building Ideas That Have Nothing To Do With Guest Posting by Erin Everhart. Published on 11/18/14. 1.4K social shares across all platforms.
10. 8 Small Tweaks That Can Deliver Big Link Building Results by Erin Everhart. Published on 7/29/14. 904 social shares across all platforms.

Methodology: Columns published in 2014 are ranked in order of pageviews measured by Google Analytics. Data were gathered on December 4 and include all columns published through December 3, 2014.