The recent Google updates have badly wrecked the old "link building" practices and now you can't just rely on social bookmarking, directory submissions and link exchange to highlight your presence. All of this, is history and if you're feeling bad while reading this because you do know some link-building techniques of the past, don't worry, it's never too late to repent.

Don't be a BAD LINK-BUILDER, now, it's time to re-think and re-design your SEO strategy. Here are some link building maxims that will help you endure your web-existence and also improve your rankings for long-term. In post-Panda and Penguin world, smarter and more powerful link building is not just recommended but, required.

And if you suffered from severe penalties from these updates than i would recommend you to read how to recover from Google Panda and Penguin and also how to recover from Google EMD Update.

1. Stay Social, Leverage Your Fan base:

This latest Google update seeks to maintain pertinence within a community of pages. Make sure your posts are shared on ALL of your social pages. There are tons and tons of tools and plugins that can help you share your post in multiple social-sites at a time.
Useful content gets likes, fans and comments which make it more popular in friends and followers. Now that's a win-win!

2. Focus On Quality And Not Quantity:

Make your links count! It's not about how many links you have;it's about how the number of links influences your entire site. In the world of Penguin, only a handful of links can help you get better ranks, if you place them well.

3. Link Your Inner Pages And Not Your Homepage:

Linking to your homepage is not just helping now! This is a rookie mistake which a lot of SEO's are still making. I understand that your homepage is THE' most important page of your website, but Google raises a red flag for sites that directs link to relevant inner-pages and blog posts.

Build link to the page where "real content" is at and not the homepage! Internal links share great importance in Penguin era, so direct Google bots and your fans to the page you want them to read.

4. Avoid Over-Optimization and Don't Push Google To Rank You:

The most important element that Google has been cracking down on with Penguin update, is over-optimization (both-offsite and on-site). Don't push Google to rank you for a specific keyword, Google hates it like anything! Stay natural and make the most of anchor texts.

Penguin update is smart enough to figure out which keyword relates best to your content, rather using forced keywords use anchor texts such as read more, click here, learn more etc. They're more natural.

5. Make Link Worthy Content:

Keep your readers engaged by producing link-worthy content. Sometimes outsourcing your article writing doesn't help, if your readers don't like your content, they will leave immediately! Quality content is what you've to produce every-time, that's the rule of thumb of SEO.

Deliver high quality content that people love to read and Google will automatically raise your ranks. It's that simple!

Google Penguin update has been indeed very effective in knocking down spam sites and raising sites that produce quality content. If you have used shady SEO techniques in the past and have been deployed by Penguin, it's time to mend and follow the maxims I've just suggested!