Natural Link Profiles…
Lesson Transcription:
In this lesson we’re going to talk about something called “natural link profiles.”
But before we jump into that, I want to talk a bit about “Google psychology:”
- How they “think” about search engine rankings
- How they determine where your website should rank
It’s important to keep in mind that Google does not want us, as marketers, to actively build links. Their philosophy, if you listen to Matt Cutts, is that if you create good quality content, people will link to you.
And, as I’ve said many times, that is true once your website hits the “tipping point”…
- Once it becomes an authority within your niche
- Once people are coming to it
- Once people are sharing it with other people
- Once your content is being syndicated naturally
…then, the theory of “if you build it, they will come” actually applies.
But with new websites, you have to get out there and build some links yourself.
So What is a Natural Link Profile?
Google has indexed billions of websites and from that, they have profiled what a good quality website (a website that is growing organically) with a natural link profile should look like.
So, the question I have for you is this:
For example, if I put up a website and all of the links that I built to it were from article directories, would that look natural to Google?
Of course not!
Any website that is growing naturally is going to have a natural link profile with backlinks from a diverse range of sources, including:
- Video sites
- Web 2.0 sites
- Social signals
- Guest posts on other blogs
- Social bookmarking
- Article marketing
A good quality organically growing website will have a natural link profile that encompasses many different backlink strategies.
I recently had lunch with a friend who confided that after Penguin he lost his rankings. I asked what he had been doing and he told me he had been using one single strategy that he’d been using for quite a while and it had been working really well.
So what happened?
Google figured out that that was not a natural link profile – it simply wasn’t diverse enough.
This concept really does apply to our entire link building campaign. What I mean by that is, not only should our links be coming from numerous different sources, they should also:
- Have random anchor text
- Some links should be do-follow and some should be no-follow
- Some links should be bare links (without anchor text)
I can guarantee that if you pick one strategy and don’t do anything else, you might get a bump initially but Google will catch on pretty quick and your rankings will start to drop.
So if you want to be successful as a search engine marketer, pushing your website up in the search engines, then you need to have a natural link profile.
- You need to go out and get links from numerous different high quality sources.
- You need to make sure that the links don’t all look exactly the same.
- Always remember that too much of one thing is not good for your website.
- You are better off having backlinks to your website from various sources.
If you do this, you will create long term stability. Because if Google suddenly devalues one of your link building strategies, you will still have all of the others to fall back on.
So you may take a small dip in rankings, but believe me, coming back from a small drop is WAY easier than coming back from a huge nosedive!
The bottom line is this:
If you are embarking on a link building campaign, you want to make sure that your link profile is natural and you’re building multiple different sources of links to your website.
If you do that, you will get good results.
If you don’t, you won’t be able to hold on to any results you get.
Hope you learned something!
I made this mistake early on when everyone was lauding article marketing as THE method to get traffic to your sites. Google started changing and suddenly a good ranking turned into no ranking. The new natural linking required to get good serps makes more sense really. I think Google is right to implement it and keep moving toward a ranking system that rewards natural growth of a site and its link net. In the end, if you want to have traffic, you have to have a good site people want to link to and talk about. I think that’s as it should be.
Thanks Derek,
I have always enjoyed and used your tips and strategies.
thanks,