It's funny how business/website owners still fall for link exchange schemes (like abc link exchange tactics now) and then 6 months later cry when they incur manual penalties. I have at least 7 sites, none of which has ever done any link exchange and even when we never had one Dofollow link, we still used to rank on the first page. It's about doing things the right way then falling for quick wins that penalise more later.

totally agree. I also flag the links how we actually got the backlink . So if we're in a paying partnership i do flag sponsored. We never had any trouble

Agreed, that is the best practice.

Agreed. Bcoz Everyone have to focus on relevant traffic whether it comes from Nofollow Resources. Google loves the relevancy rather than the matrix of Dofollow and Nofollow.

@Varun Madnani I'm curious how Google would know the difference between abc link exchanges and when a blogger organically links to you without your knowledge of it? Also, on the topic of link building, do you think guest posts are still a good way to build links back to your website? Or do you think Google would catch on if the author of the guest post matches the author of the website being linked to?

@Omid Ghiam There is a lot of grey area when it comes to back linking and theoretically there are multiple ways a search engine can figure out abc link exchanges if not done extremely cautiously (clearing all potential footprints). If search engines are currently capable of doing it actionably or not is something I can't say for certain. However, there are multiple spam updates every year and sooner or later all such schemes are caught onto. Eg. PBNs. With such tactics, manual penalties are just a matter of time. What exactly do you mean by guest posting here, do you mean paid posts? Because guest posting by itself is not a problem. Using spammy content just to exploit links is a concern. Paid posts though as mentioned earlier by Dominik should be marked sponsored.

Hey @Varun Madnani thanks for the reply! Ya it makes sense, sometimes we forget how smart Google really is haha. Best to steer clear of any spammy stuff. What I meant by guest posts is like writing for another publication free of charge. For example, let's say you're a customer of a SaaS product and you're a power user. The company then reaches out to you if you'd like to contribute an article to their blog about how you're using their SaaS for a specific use case. Then, when you do contribute that article you either link back to yourself in it or they add an author bio that links back to your site. No sponsored or paying for posts, just simply contributing for free because you love the product.

IMO, I don't think there is anything wrong with that nor should the search engine flag this. However, this product could be anything so relevance of that link to your industry/work will not be great is what I am assuming, so it might get ignored