Did you notice that the word “natural” in the title of this post is in quotes. I have put it that way for a reason.
Let’s face it, more than 80% of the links built are NOT natural i.e. they are put up by webmasters for their website in order to get more traffic. The other 20% of links ARE natural in the sense that other content creators might link to your website if they find your content useful.
But the fact still remains that most of the links built are not natural.
Search engines know this, but because links are the lifeblood of the internet, stopped such an activity would be counter-productive. But even though search engines know this fact, they have set up a system where any link building campaign which looks un-NATURAL is penalized.
So what is the rule of thumb for deciding if it is natural or not? If you look at the links coming to your website and say “Hey, I cannot really believe that the links are created naturally!”, chances are, they are not natural. While it is easier for search engines to find out that most link building campaigns are not natural, they normally err to give you the benefit of the doubt and do not penalize you unless you blatantly spam other websites in order to get ranked high.
The key here is to build links at a steady pace and vary the anchor texts a little bit in order to give it a more authentic look. Spammy link building can get you de-indexed or Google-slapped, the effects of which are long-lasting.
We at Quantum SEO Labs are careful enough not to spam. Our services make sure your link building campaigns will be seen as authentic. Check out our link building & SEO services here