Each time I attend an SEO conference I hear one story over and over. I call it the link building cycle of doom.

Apparently I was not the only one who picked-up on this during SMX Advanced. Perhaps it was because of Text Link Ads conspicuous sponsorship. Maybe it was presenters saying things like, “Is Matt out of the room? Paid links work.”

I agree with those who believe links are over-rated as a search engine ranking signal. It used to be true, links were terrific indicators. However, in the era of social media too many conversations moved to sites like Facebook and Twitter. These conversations do not link out, they hide behind firewalls or the host sites employ liberal nofollow tags.

Blogs aren’t what they used to be either. It used to be that bloggers linked to each other frequently. When one person in an industry or topical community broke a story or penned something interesting other blogs wrote about it and linked to it. Before the rise of Facebook and Twitter the definition of A-List might have been bloggers who link to each other.

Here lies an opportunity.

Search engines still value pre-2.0 Internet behavior when determining rankings. Yes, they have inserted branding as a ranking signal, but my wife’s bridal jewelry website is not going to hank highly because of her Twitter mentions. Search engines still love links!

What would happen if I linked to you when you publish an interesting story and you linked to me when I did the same? What would happen if you, I and ten or twenty others got together and emulated the old golden age of blogging? I am not naïve enough to think that an isolated network of blogs can take over the rankings. You still need links from outside your network. Links from a wide diversity of domains is king. Still, if you write link-worthy content that members of your network link to, their audience will read their stories and follow their links…and some of them, the linkerati within, may link to you too.

Consider the piranha. Alone it is a pathetic oddity certain to end up in some bird’s gullet. But as a pack piranha are fierce and can take down large animals.

Can you become a link building piranha?