Link building is it even worth it these days?

[Jazajay]

I have to admit since Panda I don't even recommend to the company to do any link building, one of our clients large,ish to the UK, regional farm business that well do everything, construction, cow bedding etc... has had 64 Page 1 listings in Google alone with just content changes, no link building in the last year.

Another one has got every term on page 1, normally, position 1, ecommerce and every category etc... even their name brands, they only have 54 products but big competitors but we have given up even measuring new results due to the time it is wasting as they are over 1000 page 1 positions again no link building, just code and content in the last year as we took it on from the start and the work we do now is all down to conversion rate optermisation. I mean we even added 1 boot and no links, except internal etc... just content got the new boot to the top of over 14 key terms just over 2 weeks in Google alone.

Boot name with brand name in it,
Boot name with out brand name in it
Boot name with colour in it
Boot name
Boot name with SKU in it
But name pural of all the above
Just SKU

We just add pages these days follow ethical best practise, guidelines for the terms the client is interested to make sure it is relevant and great copywriting, which I always think is the key, because add that with trust and well...and from one page going up I will be amased/haven't found one term that it hasn't got to page 1, position 1 or position 1 or 2, and at least 5-6 other secondary terms we hit with copywriting, in the next 7-14 days in the last maybe 4-8 months.

Again 0 link building, all content written for the user with the search engines in mind.

Personally I think a site must have a tiny bit of equity, really not much, enough to get the pages indexed and the rest is down to content these days I mean thats Panda's aim surely?

Thoughts?
Right or wrong I am just interested in other peoples views and experiance. :)

[bhartzer]

In this case, though, how competitive is that boot-keyword phrase based on what your competitors are doing? They're not doing link building, and most likely not following best SEO practices. So, if you do it "right" then you're bound to have success for the keywords?

Link building isn't just about getting a website to link to you--I personally believe that it's more than that, and 'social' also plays a role, as well.

[Jazajay]

O no totally get where you are coming from re the boots, that was just to show how we got over 1000+ page 1 listings off 54 products and support pages.

But for the name brands etc... main term(s) etc...and there are a lot of boot companies competiting in the UK, I got one of the main ones after making a change in the home page title to include the varation that was the only change I made after noticeing a couple of the competitors doing it. I mean I know the site clearly has trust, which in my eyes is the most important factor, I honestly believe that.

But another client I just did their monthly success report based on this months work, that I did last week, does beauty treatments etc.... just put them a new dedicated page on their website last wednesday and with in what 7 days they have another 22 Page 1's, most have position 1 + 2 except 3 which have just one page 1 listings for those terms and 1 which has a page 1, 3 and 4 positions. But again no link building just great copywriting for the user, with the search engines in mind. All results are from this new page we put up last week.

My personal website I maintain for family put up 1 page on his new venture and within 6 days got the new venture, national term, venture with companies in it, company in it, venture local etc...etc....the only linking I did to that was internal.

I mean the term Bumper stops, one of our other clients is up for that term on Page 1 with just content changes as a prime example, as we have done no link building for them either.

I honestly couldn't find any/many reasons to justify to the MDs why we should actually spend money on even outsourcing SEO budgets to reputable link building companies as we really don't have the time to do it ourselves at the mo. When they would say "Why? This month <company name> has just got 22 new page 1 listings, last month they had 11, the month before 7, <company name> 63 in one year and its a 3 page static.
We are not doing it presently and the success is there and the clients are happy so, explain why to us?
I honestly couldn't answer that, or think why I would ask. :)

My point is more I suppose if Link building is really the be all and end all I'm constantly hearing that it is meant to be then why when we don't do it at all and just consentrate on the copy, users then the search engines, in that order, do we see so many page 1 results so quickly for such a varity of clients and some small terms but also big terms? :)