Natural Link Building Campaigns

So you want to make your link building campaign look natural? Well, the first step there is to hang up that link building hat. Impossible, you say? Then this latest thread at SEO Chat is for you.

In it, Rand from SEOmoz studies “internet phenomenon” link explosions, highs and lulls:

I was browsing this webpage at Wikipedia recently - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_phenomenon and looked at the lengthy list of recent “phenomenon”. Realizing that these were all sites or pages that had gained thousands, possibly millions of links over a short period of time, I started investigating some of the link information via Yahoo!.

What I found was somewhat surprising and may be of interest to those seeking to understand how search engines differentiate “organically” acquired links from more forced link-building “campaigns”. Several of the features I observed (or was able to make assumptions about) stood in marked contrast to how we as link buyers and builders acquire links - perhaps this information can help us to be smarter about our acquisitions in the future (and possibly even dodge filters like GG’s dread sandbox).

Here are his four pieces of advice, expanded upon by yours truly:

• Acceleration and Deceleration of Link Gain Speed - Be jerky. Getting a hard 100 new links a month is like sending a morse code signal to the search engines that you’re purchasing links.
• Anchor Text - The most popular link text phrases are not optimized at all. Think site names. Think “click here.” Think “read this.” Even us SEOs know that link text matters and we settle for the bland “here” every once in a while.
• On-Topic Pages - Here he argues that a few on topic links might help in making the campaign appear more natural. Indeed, Bob’s Fishing Shack might link to Larry’s Personal Injury Law page because Bob recently had a slip-and-fall accident. But I’d advise you to take a look at what Google says about on-topic links: Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.
• Sitewides or Multiples on 1 Site - There’s two sides to this: Why would any site owner give another site a sitewide link voluntarily? Because of SEO, of course. Stay away from those. They’re easier to spot than a tractor in a haystack. But then again, the prevalence of blogrolls guarantees some natural sitewides. At best, though, multiple links from the same site counts as one.

And just in case you believe the engines ought to not care about link buying, read this, link pun intended. ;-)