Natural links are created, well, naturally. Over several years we’ve watched as search engines have evolved and caught up with black hat seo schemes. There are reasons why people still buy links.
This is a bad practice and I would never advise any of my clients to engage in this activity. It is a sure suffer penalties from Google and other search engines.
Here are some of the reasons why you should be creating natural links to your site.
1. It gives you a clear picture of sites quality
2. You will never have to fear another Google algorithm update
3. You will reduce the risk of bad associations
Quality Sites Get Respect
When you create high quality content, it shows. A high end polished video or article piece is appreciated by your readers and often if it strikes a chord with the reader, they may be more inclined to share it with others. The traffic generated by such an article or video will do more for your bottom line than anything else. I would never advise someone to go out and buy facebook likes, twitter likes or buy a package of links, because I understand that its counter-productive. If you are serious about the material you put out there and you create something you find will help others, then the likes and plus one’s will happen naturally.
What benefit will you gain by buying Facebook likes? I know of folks on sites like Fiverr and others, that are offering to create likes for your page. Yea, sure it creates an illusion, but its not real. Now say you actually do create a masterpiece of an article, and people genuinely like it, how will you know which are real or fake? It skews the data and muddies the waters.
A high quality site is what the search engines, and Google in particular will reward and your ranking for specific search terms will perform better as a result. Did you ever wonder how a poorly designed site got such a high pr? Why are some of the ugliest oldest looking sites doing so well with page rank?
Its not necessary to have the flashiest site, although presentation does help conversion, but you should consider the fact that the folks who created those sites often have a lot of passion behind their writing or the service they offer. This is a sure way to attract people to your site and thus become a valuable resource that encourages linking.
Google Algorithm Updates
One of the most recent Google updates to Penguin update #4 I believe, dubbed Penguin 2.0, was released on May 22nd, 2013. Its focus was an updated algorithm to combat spam. Link spam was one of the major factors that is targeted by this update. Your fears will dwindle when you follow Google’s guidelines for a high quality page.
The update is going to affect paid for inclusion links, or advertorials where you can pay to have your content added to the site with the intention of getting a link back.
Google’s guidelines suggest that these sites must make those links nofollow and also include a disclaimer.
The focus really should be on your outreach and engagement of the public. Google is using social indicators to determine interest and relevance. There are so many ways to engage people through sites like, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter etc.. The web has become closer than ever before with a simple tweet literally having the power to enact change.
When you focus on quality and allow links to be created naturally through the use of engaging social media strategies, you become less concerned about the next big algo update, or at least you should be. Since you’re now not a target for Google to go after, you really have nothing to fear. These updates are designed to combat spammers who try to game the system.
Bad Linking Practices
Linking used to be all about volume. The more links you have with your link text, the better and more effective your pages used to be when ranking for that search phrase. Now, that very activity that used to reward web pages, is now the very thing that can be their downfall. It would be untrue of me to say that I would not intentionally think about link text when creating a link back to my site.
But you have to ensure that it is not done in excess, and appears natural. But even this is risky. Those who have the most to fear are those who received warnings from Google that they are suspected of having unnatural links. This is not a good message. If you are concerned about this, take a look at the article about Google search engine penalties, as it explains this in more detail.
Watch out for people selling link packages and avoid them like the plague. You also want to stay clear of submitting to multitudes of directories. This was a common practice, years ago, but now this can get hurt you more than help. If you must submit to directories, use ones that are not automated, where a human being evaluates the site, like DMOZ.
Excessive linking with keyword rich text is unnatural and is not the way most people naturally link to something. If you have a bunch of links with exactly the same link text, you’re asking for trouble. So if you know that you’ve done this, perform a link audit immediately and try to rectify this.
A link audit should reveal a healthy or unhealthy linking profile.