Artificial vs. Natural Link Building
For Search Engine Optimization (SEO), link-building is an important element that must be done to gain the results desired. Essentially, there are two primary categories of link marketing strategies: Artificial and Natural (organic).
Artificial or Spam Methods
Junk-directory listings, blog commenting, social bookmarking, forum posting (for purposes other than legitimately contributing), blogroll links, and some types of article marketing are all artificial methods. They are artificial because they do not serve any other purpose but to “trick” the search engines into thinking the target site is important. Whether or not these methods still work, is another question. But, in my opinion, they can all be sub-categorized as “spam methods”.
You may believe that your target site that you are trying to promote is not spam and has legitimate value, but using these link building methods are certainly spam. Why spam? When it comes to link-building and SEO, any content that is relatively useless and unoriginal information specifically posted or published repeatedly for the purpose of promoting a webpage in the search engines is, by definition, search engine spam. All the methods mentioned above can all be described that way and are therefore spam. Again, whether or not these are technically effective is another story.
Natural (Organic) Link-Building
The Natural method is to produce high-quality, original, informative content that PEOPLE want to read or view. Once you figure out how to do that, the next step is to promote it via natural means. Rather than spamming the search engines with garbage links and crappy content, you will have to develop a reputation amongst real people via social networks such as Facebook or Twitter, or by guest posting on established blogs. Once you have enough interested people, every time you post some original content they will naturally follow it and even link to it on their sites. This will have a multiplier effect as more and more people find out about your stuff, the more natural backlinks will come your way.
It must be noted that this Natural method is not easy to do. This is why people opt for the cheap artificial methods most of the time. The reality is that most web bloggers and writers are terrible. I mean American Idol public audition — Terrible. There are few who take the time to polish their writing skills and learn to develop really useful original content. Many who are just writing for the web only for creating backlinks may be better writers than they appear to be, but because they need to churn it out so fast in order to propagate their junk articles they don’t actually try to write something good. Often, website owners and SEOs hire junk-article writers. These are especially common for English language articles written by people in foreign countries for a few dollars per article. The articles are mostly re-spun generic pieces with no originality and plenty of grammatical error. If you are trying to do the Natural method you need to avoid such low-grade writing. You will either have to learn to write well yourself, or hire professional writers who know what they are doing. The quality of the written material is of key importance to successful content that attracts the right kind of links.
The Google Effect
The main thing to remember about Artificial vs. Natural link-building is that the Natural method cannot be undone by changes in Google algorithms. For example, when Google did the infamous Panda Update, many of the artificial links and articles that were providing the juice for certain websites were rendered irrelevant; thus, the target sites they were propping up fell out of favor. However, those who had good Natural links from truly relevant websites by way of organic methods were not only unaffected but certainly benefited from the decline of the spamy sites cluttering up the SERPs. Since Natural link methods are exactly how Google envisions their perfect search engine (notwithstanding shamelessly promoting themselves; but that’s another article), they will always work and always benefit from Google algorithmic changes.
On the other hand, artificial methods are always adapting to these changes and such artificial methods eventually get demolished by Google. The “tricks” will in the end become pointless until someone thinks of something else. And the cycle goes on. Think of all the work people did a few years ago to syndicate their duplicate articles all over the place only to find out after Panda that only the oldest version will be considered original, while the rest are (irrelevant) duplicate content. In the same time-frame, that webmaster could have been honing their writing skills and publishing unique content that was slowly drawing the attention of others who gladly link to it because it’s good! They would be riding high right now.
The bottom line is that Natural link-building is far better and long-lasting (naturally!). Many experienced webmasters and bloggers will tell you this. What they often fail to mention is that it is painfully hard to do. As it should be, or else everybody could do it. Only those dedicated to it will succeed and even they will need a little talent and a lot of skill to make it work. The artificial methods are the “easy way”, albeit time-consuming, but they don’t last, and eventually much of the work will have to be redone with some new tactic, while the natural method thrives.