Google SEO and Building Natural Links

We are often reminded by Google that natural, editorial type links are much better for enhancing our ability to rank high in the Google search results. On the other hand it can be extremely difficult to get these naturally awarded links especially if you have a brand new site and you can only build content at a slow pace.

Google’s original patent describing how Google will crawl and index the link structure is loosely based on the academic world where references are given to unique or controversial research, each reference says something about the quality of the paper in question, the more the better.

Google works a lot like this, the more pages that reference your site the better quality of information can be expected to be found there. The problem comes when we are first starting out, we may have unique quality content but no one is going to come and see it without a link to it, this link will have to be manufactured, not natural so there’s no other way around it.

In this article I want to go through some of the aspects that make a site’s link profile look more natural than not and the first place I want to start off with is ‘deep linking’. If your site is truly a quality resource it is going to have links to multiple areas of it not just the home page. Building links to deeper pages will ensure you keep a healthier looking link profile and aid your pages in being indexed.

Reciprocal links despite Google’s acknowledgement of their low value are still widely used. Why do you think Google put’s such a low weight on reciprocal links? It is because 90% of them are manufactured based on an agreement rather than awarded simply on the basis of great quality. My advice would be to simply use them sparingly.

Natural links do not hit your site all at once, they will build up naturally overtime, as your domain gains age it will naturally pick up more links as your work is referenced progressively. If you get involve in paid links or spamming your link graph will show huge spikes, this sort of activity is bound to be recognised and penalised accordingly.