Apr 10, 2009
Google has made several changes to their algorithm to better improve their search engine and the majority of the time when they are making changes it is to fix bad practices or black hat practices of internet marketers.
In 2007 Google made some changes to the algorithm to not put much weight to those website who purchase paid links on other high PageRank websites. There were some companies who were in the business of brokering paid links and text links.
Those who were getting websites high in the search engines by buying links were then penalized and many of them dropped emphatically in the search engines. Some have wondered why Google would make such changes in the algorithm.
The foundation of Google’s algorithm is to rank websites that have grown and built up naturally without some type of detection, or in other words Google does not like to be fooled or schemed. In order to better their algorithm they look to find websites that grow in popularity because users think a website is popular, not because that website is buying their way up the search results so to speak.
So the goal is to make your website have incoming links that look natural.
Here are some examples of inbound links that look unnatural:
Site 1: Has 200 links that are all coming from high PageRank websites. This looks unnatural.
Site 2: Has 200 links that are all coming from PageRank 0 websites. These links are not going to pass high link reputation and will not increase your rankings high.
Here is an example of inbound links that look natural:
Site 1: Has 200 inbound links and there is a mixture of PR 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc. This looks more natural and will fair better than the site with all 200 links from a PR 4 website.
Site 2: Has 200 inbound links that point to several pages within the domain and not to just one page.
The next step is having the anchor text links not be all the same. For example if you are going after the keyword “web design” and all 200 links that are incoming links have the anchor text “web design” then that does not look natural.
It is best to have a variety of anchor text for your incoming links in order to make it look more natural.
The next thing in building natural inbound links is to have the inbound links point to several pages within the website and not all of them to same page. Having deep links meaning links to subpages and not all of them to the home page will make your inbound links look more natural.
It is also crucial when building natural inbound links that they do not happen all at once in a short period of time and then stop. Especially for new websites it is imperative to not build incoming links at a very fast pace as this looks highly unnatural.
Building natural inbound links is essential in any SEO campaign. As the search engine’s algorithm sees that the inbound links to a website look more natural then they will respect the website more.
As you build natural inbound links your website will look more natural to the search engines and will gain higher respect and authority. Plus as the search engines make constant changes to their algorithm you will not be penalized if you are doing something that looks unnatural, shady, or black hat.
The only constant thing with search engines is change and you have to always be aware that change will come on an ongoing basis.
Good content.
Today with the economic recession, there are many people who are looking out to increase targeted traffic to their website or blog. There are several strategies one can use to achieve this which may be either free or paid. For instance, you can set up a PPC campaign and expect instant traffic and results if it is set up and optimized the right way.
However, if you are looking to save on your cost and at the same time want the most useful strategy, then building back links naturally is very effective. This is especially the best tactic when you have an inbound link coming from a website that receives high traffic and also that’s relevant to your site. This process could be quite time consuming, but worth the efforts in the long run. However, make sure that the quality of your links is not compromised as it’s the quality that counts and not quantity.
Good article. Thanks for sharing. Anyone familiar with natural search engine optimization principles knows that “content is king”. However, it’s also well-known that inbound links help all that content rank higher. In a nutshell, search engines treat each backlinks to your content as a vote. The more quality “votes” your content gets, the more “important” they deem that content to be.