What is natural link building, and how does it affect SEO? Is it another myth, or does it happen for real? What is the impact on rankings and traffic?
I will try to answer the above questions using the blog you are reading now as a case study and give you examples of natural links.
What Is Natural Link Building?
Natural link building is exactly what the name suggests i.e. backlinks that are created naturally without the website owner having to go and generate them either through guest posting, or other forms of link building practices.
In simple words, natural links happen when other webmasters, bloggers, or website owners link to your content (blogs, images, products, videos, etc.) because they think it is helpful for their readers and adds value to their websites or pages.
Is Natural Link Building Important?
It is widely accepted in the SEO industry that having natural links is the best, safest, fastest, and most efficient way to promote a blog or website.
With natural links, you can feel secure that your content is good and that your rankings and traffic will not be affected by a Google algorithmic change.
Is it Another SEO Myth?
One of the things I had real trouble understanding when I first started with blogging was ‘how to get natural links’.
I did not know what to do so that other people find and link to my content.
I always believed this was a myth and that building links was the only way to get links.
The problem with building links is that sooner or later, Google will discover that the links are not natural, and you will lose both your rankings and traffic.
Even worse, they may penalize your domain, making it even more difficult.
So, the only way to gain rankings is to avoid bad practices ,but follow pure white hat SEO techniques, and natural link building is one of them.
The Case Study
Some time ago, I wrote an article about off page SEO and explained the importance of natural link building for your off page SEO efforts and I can show you how natural link building worked for my SEO blog.
All the links you see below point to several pages of the Reliablesoft blog. They all come from respected and well-known blogs in the industry, and all are natural links.
I did not ask, pay, write, or otherwise have any involvement in getting those links pointing to my blog.
The list is much bigger but these are the blogs or websites you probably identify and visit regularly.
What Are The Benefits From Natural Links?
- Traffic – All the above websites have lots of traffic, and the day the posts were featured on their home pages, I received a good amount of traffic to my blog.
- Industry recognition – It is always good to get referenced by some of the top blogs in your industry.
- More natural links – When the big guys link to you, other blogs also link to you. If you are important for the big blogs, you are also important for the smaller blogs.
- Courage – Similar to the 2nd, but when you see those natural links flowing in, you get more courage to continue what you do.
- More social shares – The posts that attracted natural links also got the most attention in social media networks.
- Better rankings – Incoming links affect rankings; the pages that receive those links enjoy good first-page rankings.
How Do You Get Natural Links?
This is the most important question of this article. The benefits of natural links are all great, but how do you get them?
It’s a three-step process and one that I am sure you have heard before, but let’s review it again:
1. Write/publish/create good content
If the content is not good, nobody will naturally link to it. If you are still at the beginning and nobody is reading your content, don’t get disappointed; write like your articles are read by thousands of people and try to make them better and better.
Don’t just look for the present; try to plan for the future. When the time comes and traffic starts flowing in, you have to be ready with good content to keep your visitors engaged.
2. Social Media
Social media may not have a direct impact on rankings, but it does have a direct impact on natural link-building.
Through social media, you can put your content in front of the people who are more likely to be interested and link to it.
In my case, these people are other bloggers, digital marketers, writers, content contributors, SEO Experts, etc.
These are the types of people I follow on social media, and these are the types of people who are more likely to link to my content.
Without having a social media presence, this would be impossible, and this alone is a good reason why everyone (blogger or business) should maintain a good presence on social media.
3. Consistency
Consistently writing good content and promoting it on social media while at the same time trying to build connections with other bloggers is the way to go.
Timing is essential, and to find the right timing to put your content in front of the right people, you need to be consistent in your publishing schedule.
Doing 2-3 times per week increases your chances of this happening rather than doing it once monthly.
Is Guest Posting Natural Link Building?
I already answered this question in the first paragraph above, but I want to clarify this again.
When you publish content on some other website and somewhere in the content, you include a link back to your website. This is not natural link-building, even if it is for free or in the author bio.
This does not mean that links from guest posting are all bad, but you cannot consider those are being ‘natural links’.
Conclusion
When Google's founders created their first website ranking algorithm, natural links played a very important role. Twenty-plus years later, natural links are still very important, with one major difference.
Thousands of people try daily to manipulate the Google algorithm by generating backlinks that look like natural links, and Google is continuously revising its ranking algorithms to spot and deemphasize these fake links.
Other than that, natural links are more important than ever for rankings, traffic, and industry recognition.
They are also the fuel to keep content marketers doing whatever they can do best, i.e., creating and promoting content.
The best way to become a link magnet is to create good content, make social media connections with people who may be candidates to link to your content, rinse and repeat.
George says
The only reason you got those links is because the content is related to the industry. Most of the time normal people that don’t know about SEO won’t magically link to content. Webmasters of sites outside the industry will rarely do this which is why the “write good content and you will get links mantra” is extremely misleading.
Great link bait though to promote your services 🙂
Alex says
George Hi
Thank you for your comment.
I don’t expect from anyone outside the SEO industry to link to the content of this blog. I actually don’t want these kind of links but I want links from related websites (like the ones listed above).
I have many other examples to share from websites in different niches that get ‘natural links’ because of the content and I do disagree with the statement that “write good content and you will get links mantra is extremely misleading.”.
As I mentioned in the post, it took me years to understand natural link building and in my opinion the mistake that most bloggers do at the beginning is that they give up too quickly. They either don’t give the necessary attention to the content or they don’t bring it in front of the people that could potentially link to it.
Thanks again for taking the time to comment.
Alex
Romjan Dhayan says
This is another awesome blog post from you. Yeah i will agree with you for getting natural link building by creating good content. In the internet everyone wants to get quality content. Thanks for sharing this post with us.
Chetan Jadhav says
You’re superb pal! Somehow I found your blog When I was googlin’ “SEO Audit Checklist” and google landed me on your blog. still i’m reading your blog. Okay it’s time to come to the point, you say natural link building is better for seo i am also at one with you on this point but, It’s too difficult to earn natural backlinks and i hope so you know that now my point is instead of it what you do you do to earn backlinks. Don’t you perform any manually artificial linkbuilding.
Dubai Poster says
Fantastic info about link building!
paul reffill says
Alex, Because of you i liked and subscribed reliablesoft. Your blogs are really motivating for SEO purpose. I believe a thing that content will always be a king to the genuine traffic and natural links
Alex says
Thanks Paul, All the best in your SEO efforts.
Matt says
Natural link building is hard. In fact, I have been trying to build links naturally for years. Having a blog where you can post new material helps a lot. On the other hand, one cannot expect that by writing new enticing content, links will start flowing in naturally.
Alex says
Hi Matt
It is true, natural link building is hard and as you said, you can not expect that just by writing great content links will start to flow in. You need to get out and promote your content, and spend time in making your content ‘known’ to other bloggers.
Alex
Happy Raj says
A very useful piece of article, however, can you please elaborate how to create natural links other than just publishing quality content? can we do infographic outreach? is it natural?
Alex Chris says
Hi Raj
Yes you can do an infographic outreach and get links naturally. If the links are not paid for then there is nothing to worry about. There is nothing wrong from contacting other webmasters and letting them know about your infographic. If they like it, they will add to their websites and link back to the source. That’s perfectly fine.
Thanks
Alex
Marcus Ollison says
I’m not sure if there is an exact science when it comes to natural backlink practices. I assume everyone has their own opinion on what is actually the right way to gain backlinks
sanket says
Today i have learned alot from your article.Your article is very informative and i guess it will help me in building natural Backlinks & increase organic traffic of my website . I was searching for a good article to start on and i found your useful article.Thanks a lot…