I am guessing that link trading is useless and/or potentially harmful?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Steven Ciccantelli: I am guessing that link trading is useless and/or potentially harmful?
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  Jim Munro: If you drink a bottle of methylated spirits, Steven, it probably will not kill you but if you make a habit of it, you can be sure you are going to die.
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  Steven Ciccantelli: +Jim Munro that's hilarious.You can't imagine the amount of emails I get concerning SEO.
  Before I joined G+ what 4 months ago I would usually just spend my money.Now I just ask!
  If it to good to be true it probably is.I left some laced eggnog with catnip for the Seo Kitten.Perhaps next time I try her/him will be more generous.
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  Steven Ciccantelli: Oh and the dozen phonecalls a day promising me...well the world..lol
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  Jared Bates: You mean this little world in my pocket? It ranks anything it touches and it makes a mean cup of coffee too... ;
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  Steven Ciccantelli: +Jared Bates you got it from link pymamids to backlink crop circles they even have names like Rachel links etc..More like cappuccino with an extra shot.All this for just.....way beyond my budget....click.
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  John Smith: Link building is not yet finished. We should care about the quality links while building links rather than low quality directories links.
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  Craig Moore: Steven here are a few ideas on good safe Google friendly link building ideas. There are three pages. This is the first page https://s3.amazonaws.com/craig-moore-adsense-seo/seo-tutorial-safe-link-building.html
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  Steven Ciccantelli: +Craig Moore great read and info thank you for sharing.It does take a ton of time but well worth it.
  I still get confused with conflicting ideas but G+ has me struggling less and helping me save money too.
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  Jim Munro: +Craig Moore ;I appreciate what you tried to do but our objective here is to share knowledge underpinned by peer-review. Please share your thoughts here rather than link to your site in future. Thank you for your cooperation.
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  Steven Ciccantelli: +Jim Munro is there another community that has sites +Craig Moore ?
  I try to read as much as I can but get easily distracted....lol
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  Jim Munro: The web is awash with advice, +Steven Ciccantelli ;some good, some bad, some both good and bad. Ask yourself where it was that you found things beginning to make sense.
  
  Peer-review is the only way that I know of that is even approaching usefulness.
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  Steven Ciccantelli: +Jim Munro now I read that a 5000 word blog is the ideal tell me this is not so.If I wanted to write a dissertation I would be in graduate school.
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  Jim Munro: I think your bullshit radar might need a service, Steven. :)
  
  Write an article and find out how many words it has once it is finished. Publish it if you think it is good enough.
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  Steven Ciccantelli: +Jim Munro I typed bs radar technician and your name popped up.As you have stated there is so much information out here and I never know what to believe.Lol
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  Jim Munro: I don't know the right answers, Steven, but as long as you know how to ask the right questions, I think you might find what you are looking for here.
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  Craig Moore: +Steven Ciccantelli ;+Jim Munro ;Matt Cutts when asked about the Panda update filtering out websites with "Thin Content" in an interview said that as a minimum each page should have between 300 to 500 words. ;
  
   ;With regards the dangers of ;"Keyword stuffing" your keywords should only form about 2% of your text. Therefor the more you write the more times you can use your keywords in one article without being considered a spammer by the Google algorithm. This is why some people are suggesting 5000 word articles. That is far to long in my opinion. That should have been broken up into four web pages.
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  Steven Ciccantelli: +Craig Moore thank you for the input.I feel comfortable with around 300 words and I will reduce my keywords.It is a very boring topic I speak about though so guess next post will be somewhat off the charts.
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  Jim Munro: It's in Matt Cutts' interest to have people standardising their output because that makes them easier to spot algorithmically.
  
  I am not an expert in this or any other segment of SEO but I would just tell your story, Steven, and let the keywords fall where they may. You might save a lot of brain cycles and accidentally produce a worthwhile article.
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  Steven Ciccantelli: +Jim Munro doubtful but you and +Matt Cutts will be the stars.
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  Steven Ciccantelli: BTW am I allowed to use real people in a nice way for a zany post?