Natural link building is links that are created naturally without the need of the website owner or the administrator to generate the links through various methods such as guest posting or other types of link building practices. Another word, natural links will occur when other bloggers or website owners link to your content online (Examples: articles, blogs, images, videos) as they believe that by doing so will be beneficial to their online readers and adds value to their website. Natural linking is done in an organic way without the tracking parameters, will not redirect via JavaScripts or monetization tools and exist within the paid or sponsored content.
It is a common knowledge in the SEO industry that using natural links is considered to be the safest and fastest efficient SEO method to promote a blog or article for the website. Using natural linking method is very secure to ensure that the site’s rankings and traffic will not be affected by the change in the Google algorithmic as long as the content is good.
As a contrast to natural links, unnatural links are paid links and can be used to place and tracked by a third party company or monetized via affiliate programs, CPC campaigns and monetization scripts. The downside of using unnatural links is that it can cause potential penalties by search engines such as Google algorithmic and severely affect the site’s ranking. Unnatural links will normally use tracking parameters like medium or UTM source for their links, commonly found within the sponsored content in a website and using monetization scripts for the site owner to be paid for linking to targeted retailers.
There are cases where some webmasters will use the semi-natural link which is natural links using tracking parameters as this could lead to an organic but unnatural link. To resolve this issue, site owners will need to ensure that the viewer reaches their website via a tracked link and redirect it to pass the parameters and resolve to the natural page structure. By doing so will ensure that the site owner will have the standard and non-tracked URL and are able to properly attribute traffic, sales and leads to the original site.
To create a natural link successfully, quality backlinks are vital as it is the links that come from high-quality sites and can easily affect the site’s page ranking. To determine the quality of the sites, it is important to ensure that:
- The site is niche and the topic is regularly updated.
- No outbound links to pornographic, illegal or scam sites.
- Do not have a price tag or mention of text links or backlinks.
- Able to locate the sites in the Google or other search engine’s news feed to deem that the sites are trustworthy and of high quality to the search engine.
- The links are acquired by the staff writers instead of the contributors.
- No forum mentions, blog comments, press releases or other related links that can be done or bought easily by third parties.
One thing to differential between a good link and quality link is that a good link is a type of link that has a positive impact and less risky. There are many factors to determine good links and is usually based on what type of SEO the site owner is doing (For example, local or global, Yahoo or Google) and the links can also be determined and index by the country’s government according to their internet regulations. While local directories that are well managed and maintained with options of non-submissions may be beneficial for local SEO, it might not be a national issue due to the potential quality and content relevance.
A good example will be a new blog which has a relevant content without a strong SEO traffic but has a lot of engaged readers online. This blog would be a considered as a good link have a due to the quality audience and could be a great asset and source of traffic/sales to the site owner.
Since natural links are quality links, these links are often difficult to acquire but are still highly sought after as these links are normally in related content sites that are similar to the business of the site owner, thus making it a quality link and helps to protect the owner’s site during Google algorithm’s update. Focusing on quality links can also help to get more relevant readers via referring or social media sites with the possibility to become potential customers in the long run.
