Quote:
Originally Posted by Profits of Doom
If non-natural linking is two sites that exchange reciprocal links, what would be considered natural linking? When you say natural linking do you mean a reciprocal link to a site that has a similar theme, content, or basis as your's?
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beta-tester got the theory right, so I shall try to come up with an example.
Let's say I have a blog about music. Whether my site is commercial in intent or not, I work hard to provide my visitors with something they will read and want to come back to read some more. Along the way, without a thought about search engines, I'm going to mention records, artists, tours, t-shirts, you name it... all kinds of things related to my topic. And I'm going to link to a bunch of other sites in the process: it's the equivalent of you telling a friend you went to a great restaurant last week, which he should try sometime. You give him the name and address, not just leave him hanging
Somewhere down the line, other site owners visit my site. A few of them like it. A few of those who do, in the same way I mentioned and linked to other resources, will mention and link back to me. And if I am really lucky, some of those who do will be owners of authoritative sites. That will help my site to be eventually recognized by the SE's as an authoritative site in its own right.
That is natural (or if you prefer, organic) linking. No-one has sat down to consider relevancy or any of the other factors which concern people who are trying to manipulate the engines. In fact if my site made the news because of its visitor count, or because I was making a ton of money from it, I could - for example - get natural links back from news sites or sites focused on the internet. But as in life away from the internet, all such references would build my credibility, not only with surfers, but also with the search engines.
This process is obviously hit and miss, often a long one, and since the number of authoritative sites is much smaller than the number of wannabes, there are far more losers than winners. Its biggest plus for many, is simply that linking in this way is never damaging.
Trying to manipulate search engines on the other hand, while not impossible, is not something to take lightly. Their programmers know all the tricks and while their algorithms may lag behind the most sophisticated black-hatters, they learned how to spot things such as big lists of reciprocal links (even if "cunningly" disguised by being a-b-c links) long ago. It's willfully naive to pretend otherwise, no matter how frustrating the alternatives.