Remember this post over 4 years ago, “the death of ezines“? It didn’t take a rocket scientist to observe that abuse that past ezine directories incited. It was a free way to get links and so terrible and spammy content flooded the service.
Generally speaking, any link acquisition strategy that starts to look like spam, or experiences a decrease in obvious quality, has ceased to become a viable means of attracting incoming web links.
Put it this way, if you can tell a website/service looks spammy, how long ago did Google figure it out. Probably a lot earlier than you.
So how should one approach content marketing strategies?
Quite simply, if you have found a space where you can write a lasting piece of content that contributes to the particular website’s target audience (and hopefully related to yours as well) that will provide benefits to you beyond a link (branding, social mentions, etc.) then go for it.
If you’re content marketing (guest blogging for example) simply for a random link, then don’t. That strategy widespread could be detrimental. In the least it has diminished returns and probably isn’t worth the time.