Ecommerce Development
I hate the term “Natural linking” by Adam Sorensen
The latest lingo in the SEO community is all about “natural link building” or “natural linking”. I hate these terms, because if you’re doing SEO, there’s really no such thing. If I were to do “natural linking,” or linking without any SEO in mind, I would do some of the following:
*sarcasm*
1. I would create a links page with a ton of links to a bunch of random sites.
2. I would never link to my competitors or relevant content. Heck, I don’t want to help them out.
3. I would always use my company name in the link.
4. I would link to other sites in my network all in the same IP
You get the idea. “Natural linking” as defined by the SEO community, is really just about being more manipulative then before with the search engines.
Contrary to what most believe out there, I still think that good reciprocal linking will help your site to rank well. “Natural linking” yeah, whatever. If there is such a thing, it doesn’t help you in the search rankings.
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December 6th, 2005 at 11:19 am
I completely disagree with you. Natural linking basically just means you get a link without asking for it. It’s just common sense that the search engines will place more importance on such a link. If you can gets links without asking for them that tells the search engines that your site obviously has something of importance, if you just trade links it doesn’t mean anything more than you trying to trick the search engines.
If you think your visitors want to see a link page with a bunch of random sites you’re mistaken. They want value, if linking to another site provides them value you should do so. No one is saying you have to help your competition.
You better do your homework on this issue. There is such a thing as natural linking and it does help your rankings.
December 6th, 2005 at 11:30 am
Cameron,
I appreciate your comments. So are you defining “natural linking” as sites that link to you without any effort on your part? If so, why hire an SEO?
December 6th, 2005 at 3:22 pm
What I mean by “natural link” is that you’re not emailing and asking for links, paying for links, or joining a recip link club.
Doesn’t it make sense to you that a search engine would place more importance on a natural link? I know if I’m visiting a site I would rather follow a natural link then a recip or paid link. Just knowing that someone is linking without getting anything in return tells me there is something of value behind that link.
The job of an seo isn’t simply to build links, there’s specialty companies for that. SEO is much much more then just link building. I’m sure you’d agree wouldn’t you?
In this entry here http://www.lavaball.com/design_development_tips/2005/11/03/reciprocal-linking-alive-and-well/
You stated:
“Reciprocal trading doesn’t have as much weight as one way links, but it still has weight. Reciprocal links are far easier to come by than one way links too. ”
So which is it? Are one way links better or not? And is something that’s harder to work for (one way links) usually worth more?
It’s like having something of value that came from hard work, it’s going to be treated much better than something that came easily.
If you still don’t agree then lets agree to disagree.
December 6th, 2005 at 3:34 pm
Let me make something perfectly clear. I completely agree with you that one way links, that look natural, are going to help you more in the search engines. But my point is this: If you’re doing SEO, link building or whatever, how can you call a one way link, with your high-traffic keywords in the anchor, that you worked toward getting, natural? It didn’t happen naturally at all.
Most real natural links will have the name of the company in the link. You and I both know that this will not help the company rank for high-traffic keyword phrases, it’ll just help them rank well for their company name.
So, “natural link building” - as the SEO community calls it - is not real natural link building. SEOs want links with keywords in them not company names.
December 7th, 2005 at 6:32 pm
straight from the horses mouth