SEO can be a bit of a revolving door (web site pop-ups could potentially start affecting your SEO ranking beginning January 10, 2017).
It's important to keep up with these changes as they are inevitable. I try to diversify my strategy as much as possible
For those who are wondering where this conversation branched off, JG was referring to my recent blog article -
Introduction to Online Branding
Well then you better pull that pop up off yer site LOL, I never installed one on any of my sites. Thought about it but I hate plugins just for the sake of plugging in
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Relevance, Traffic, Value is the qualities to look for in a backlink imo. Any backlink strategy can be technically classified as blackhat since it all is an attempt to manipulate search results. That is why content is king and promotion is queen. The content should inspire the backlinks according to Matt Cutts...
We can agree to disagree on this...but I know I have ranked dead dead dead sites to first page in 48 hours with zero content. It is what it is... I prefer to have great content and have google like me...although google is NOT our friend