I've said it for months: Buying links is a bad idea! Matt Cutts and many other industry experts have explained that link buying is not a good way to SEO your website. WE LISTENED and have never purchased links for any clients. I did a couple of years before I started SpryDev but that was before I knew any better.

Finally, Google has come out with a crystal clear statement about buying links. Last week they updated their Webmaster Guidelines on this topic. Here is their text in full (Emphasis mine.):

Prior to Google (1988) search engines used a myriad of schemes to determine the rank of results in the search engines. Some used the frequency a term appeared on a page. Others used the keyword Meta tag. Yahoo used human power to evaluate and create a massive directory. All those methods lacked two things: authenticity (they're easy to fake) and scalability (it's impossible to evaluate every single website by hand).

There's one easy way to gain added links that you may have never thought of before... 

Robin Nobles of the Academy of Web Specialists and Search Engine Workshops warns against a very common mistake: Never send out a "blanket" email to hundreds of sites asking for a reciprocal link.

Instead, "Make each email personal. Mention something that you like on their site. Give the URL for their links page. Discuss one of their products. Ask them a question. Do ANYTHING to make it clear that this is a personal request and not a mass-generated email."

John Alexander with Beyond SEO and Search Engine Workshops is a great resource for people looking for unique link building advice. I often find interesting points from him that I like to share with my readers. For example, he recommends:

An easy way to make sure you are getting "quality" inbound links is to download the Google Toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com), which allows you to see a site's ranking. Although there is some debate over how important PR really is, at the moment it is still a relevant aspect to link building. We recommend choosing links with a minimum of 3 out of 10.