Is traditional linking dead? Has the game changed?

Hey, I've been out of the picture for the past few years with medical issues and such and so I guess I have no clue what it takes to get ranked any longer. I have several sites with good placement in google and I have never commented in a blog and I have no idea what an RSS feed is. Reading through these forums, many of the concepts discussed are foreign to me. So let me ask this.

In the past, it was about Google wanting original content and there was a push to get webmasters/site owners to write a page a day for their site. Relevant content that would eventually be indexed. Then the goal was to get backlinks but I'm speaking of reciprocal links or better yet, one way links from edu, libraries, etc.

Now it appears that it doesn't matter how you get your backlink so long as you get your site url out there? I know there is more to it. I just want to know if the game has changed dramatically over the past 5 years?

I wouldn't say it has changed dramatically. Same game, new players and rules.
You still want to have original content updated as often as possible, and you still want backlinks everywhere. People still want edu backlinks as well.

However, people want shortcuts and easier ways to beat the system so to speak. Programs to blast sites with your links, auto blogs, spinning articles, article directors, etc...

It seems like you know what needs to be done, but you have just missed the latest ways to get them done.
Look around, ask more questions, and I think you'll succeed just fine.

Quality links are still better than spammy blog-comments or the like. I'm too tired to give a detailed answer lol

edit: the dude above put it well

Well tired or not, I appreciate you taking the time to answer and what you guys are writing makes sense. I can never imagine that Google would promote a practice of spamming blogs/directories with links either intentionally or intentionally. I would think that once they have word of this practice, they would devalue backlinks from articles, etc. But hey, maybe it is still worth it. I don't know. Seems counter intuitive in the long run but I'm thinking that as long as you don't risk getting in trouble, then why not?

The practice of emailing webmasters for a legitimate link yields so little results that it is probably forcing people to get creative. I know that when I check mail several times a day most link letters are already filtered out before I ever see them. Seems unfair since it is the very thing I seek to accomplish myself with some of my lower ranking sites.

This site appears to be a great resource though and some of the tools I would not call black hat at all. In fact much of the advice offered here would be considered mainstream by most.

Anyway, I appreciate the feedback on these newer forms of traffic and backlink generation. Thank you.

Whitehat SEO:
Build a blog/website. Use web2.0 bookmarks which link to your site.
Build links by blog commenting and forumming manually.
Buy high PR domain. Get a backlink from it.

Blackhat SEO:
Autoblogs: Build blogs which scrape content and get updated automatically. Currently works but soon will be shot by google.
MNS: Made for adsense Micro niche sites. Supposedly hit by google panda update couple of months ago.. but still works.
Softwares:
Scrapebox: Blast blogs with spammy comments. get thousands of backlinks
Xrumer: Blast forums with spam get thousands of backlinks
Article Marketing Robot: Write 1 article. Automatically spin it and submit it to thousands of article directories.
SEnukeX: Daddy of all tools

I guess for my domains that are already well established I should probably not try any of the black hat options in the last post. But it does sound like everyone is using blogs to some extent.

Yea, definately submit manually to high PR blogs.
Download seo powersuite on these forums including seo spyglass
Supposedly majestic SEO also tells you where to find the blogs, and scrapebox will help you as well

I have been using SEO Spyglass for some time but I have typically used it to find the high PR sites that backlink to my competitors. Then I write to them for free links. Very helpful finding those .mil, .gov and .edu links. Never thought much about it for blogs. I wish I knew more about blogging. I see the blog pages on the reports but I don't know if they are manually submitted or personally done or what. Kind of unrelated but can someone tell me if there is a resource that shows what blogs are auto submit and which are manual? I don't know. Just looking for any help here to get started.

i think the most important now is the content and the diversity of links u make to your website

Along with all that except black-hat just explore the backlink of your competitor and put your link to the same site on which your competitor have. This is my personal experience it helps a lot in getting good SERP.