Natural link building should be at the forefront of every webmaster’s SEO campaign because it’s the surest way to get your website ranking with the search engines.

There’s no need to overly complicate matters.

Your on-page SEO should be aimed at letting the search engines know what’s on a page; your off-page SEO, which will take up 80 to 85% of your time after setting your website up, needs to gather backlinks naturally, so that you prove to the search engines you are an authority in your field.

Why The Natural Approach?

We stress that natural link building is the way to go, because the search engines like websites that replicate nature – they are set up to reward organic growth rather than forced, manufactured growth; and they can clamp down heavily on any websites they deem to step out of line – as many have found, during the Google “Panda updates”, which we mentioned recently.

Fitting In To The Google Model

Google lives and dies by providing the best, most relevant search results. If it can’t do this, then people become unhappy with their search results, they move elsewhere and that means they no longer control all those pairs of eyes and therefore cannot command the same advertising revenue (which makes up 90% of their business.)

The whole Google model is built on accuracy of search results, so it’s no surprise that they protect their “turf” by penalising sites that are deemed to be “gaming” the system.

In light of this, maybe you would like to reconsider your policy of outsourcing your link-building to a contractor, who you’ve asked to create as many links as possible for your site.

So How To Take The Natural Approach?

Natural link building is vital to follow the Google model.

You may want to consider incorporating the following into your link building campaign, so that your links appear to be more naturally generated:

1. A variety of Sources – get back-links from many different sources; there are directory links, reciprocal links, article directory links, guest blogging links and so on. Use every link-building resource available to you.
2. Links to All Pages Of Your Site – make sure that the links that are set up to point to all pages of your site, not just the Home Page. It’s not natural that everyone would link to the Home Page so link to blog articles, product pages, information pages and so on. These are often called “deep links”.
3. Vary the Anchor Text – the “anchor text” is the wording used for the actual link (in blue usually) that people click on to be taken to your website. This may be a simple URL or may include some of your keywords – keep it varied, as it tells the search engine that your site is relevant for a variety of keywords, not just one phrase.
4. Add Links Over Time – it’s not natural to have all your links in place overnight. Adding them gradually will appear to be more organic and is more likely to be rewarded by high rankings down the track. This means that you should have an ongoing SEO link building campaign that looks at the long-term rather than just instant results.

Just following the four approaches above should see your small business ranking well for your keywords because MOST businesses are not doing this. Depending on the level of competition in your sector you can see your website rise quickly to the top.

Apart from advice on natural link building there are plenty more small online business tips for SEO in the Competition Crusher Workshop at www.crusherworkshop.com. You can watch it all for FREE by clicking on the link!