Create natural looking links using lots of text

I have been evaluating a few links pages on my sites and other peoples sites and comparing them to the 'natural links' that Matt Cutts and Google are always talking about.

Basically Google says that natural links give a load more weight than any other links.

What are natural/unnatural links?

A natural link could be where a blogger discusses a new site and then adds a link to it or where a site reviews something and links to the full product details.

An unnatural link is where there are a bunch of unconnected external links in the footer or a list of unrelated links with no text around them.

What can we do?

My idea is that if instead of exchanging a simple link people start to exchange a whole paragraph or two of unique text with a link in the middle then google will treat it as a natural link. Call the links page something other than links.html and include a few of these paragraphs of unique text and each link will be valued quite highly I expect.

Has anyone experimented with this technique?

 

I have been thinking about that... but i was going to go about it in a different way.

The main theme of my site below is "Pittsburgh". There are plenty of sites that make mention of this city - and I was thinking of making an open offer either on my site or here on DP to pay a few bucks just to get that mention of the city turned into a link to my site.

This is sort of the same thing as what you were saying - but its a way for site owners to get a few bucks for absolutely no work on their end. And it doesnt look spammy like link pages... (even though i have one of those too)

 

Thats a really good idea and would work very well in your case.

I'm not sure it would work as well if you were targetting a commercial term like "dvd player" as the costs may be pretty high.

This would be a very good offer to bloggers as they often don't get much income and have lots of content. I reckon if you started a thread to exchange these sorts of links then everyone with a blog/site could interlink with their chosed anchor text - I would certainly be happy to do it.

 

There are some sites, like phpfreaks.com, that use a script to automatically parse the text on their pages and add external links to certain outside advertisers.

For example, a server company might buy all of the following keywords: "server, dedicated, colocation, reseller" and then the script that parses the page would automatically change all of those words to a link to that particular site.

 

I have seen this too, it would be a good plugin for Wordpress to allow you to sell links for certain words and the links to be automatically created.

 

Another option is to seek out relevant websites and offer to write content for their site for free. Tell them you'll do it for free as long as they keep active a link you will put in the content.

People are always looking for new unique content for their sites. Just don't write the same content for multiple sites, that way it looks more natural to search engines.

 

Another good idea

 

mad4, good ideas there. What do you suggest as a name instead of links.html. Info.html? Reviews.html? Or use a keyword such as dvd.html?

 

I hope it works good... and yes changing name may surely give an upperhand as well... good thinking mad4...

Manish

 

The majority of people have used links.html or resources.html as the page name for all of their links and the search engines have caught on so just name it something else, it doesnt really matter what the name is just make it random.

 

I have used partners.html before but I think it depends on the site. Try to make it sensible for your readers rather than using a keyword.

 

Good discussion here! Nice thread Mad4! what you present is a very interesting concept and I think if you compound the weight of the embedded link in a paragrapgh as well as a theme based weight of the publisher site- you can build some very powerful and valuable links.

 

Sayles hit it right on the money - this is a great thread idea, and it has finally gotten me to get up off my butt and do something about what I posted above about.

I just created a page on my site that lists a few requirements of me buying a keyword off of a particular website owner. I am not here to hijack the thread, I just give some insight to what others may want to do on their sites as well.

Any other ideas for what else should be required for links like this?
Remember, if you require PR, high PR pages will cost much more than a few dollars.
You will also want to make sure that these are quality pages - anyone can throw up a page with the keyword you are looking for and steal your heard earned cash.

Now, on my site I offer a measly few bucks - but for any site owner that should be more than enough $ to spend 2 minutes to change one word into one link.

I do understand that this way of link building may not be for everyone, but you need to make sure that you reinvest the money you've made on your website back into it. It's the only way to get bigger and better.

After selling a few premium links on my site, and making even some more in Adsense - I feel it is better to put it right back into the site rather than spend it on beer during this coming weekend.

 

Very interesting concept! Thanks for sharing. I know it would be easy for me to change the way I handle my resources page on my site, (changing the page title, including more text around each link, etc.) but it is my link on other sites that help me and it is not like I can go and change how other sites present their links. KWIM? Any thoughts on this? How would you suggest this to webmasters of the site you want to exchange links with? They would think it was odd if I asked them to include my link along with a few paragraphs of text.

Unless I change to layout of my links page and then explain to them the benefits?

 

Check out http://www.naturallinkexchange.com. You basically are exchanging articles with your keyword phrases as the 'anchor text'.

I just started using this service, so I can't really give any feedback yet as to whether it works well or not.

 

I hope you don't mind SEOinAZbut I have stolen this idea and started a thread (see my sig) offering to write free content for websites.

Already got one customer which gets me a homepage link to my phone site.

 

I know you have just started using the service, but can you tell us more about it? I noticed they have PHP/ASP that will insert links - have you put this into your website yet?

Also, do they have a commercial side for people who don't want to be in the network, but wish to purchase links?

Thanks!

 

I sometimes exchange links on content pages - the difficulty is keeping track of it all. A directory script will check my link partners for me but content page link exchanges need to be checked manually or not at all.

I would write articles for people I trust, but otherwise I'd be worried they might delete my link.

A few people (at least one blogger) sell permanent links where you find a phrase in one of their blog entries and pay 6.00 or so for the perm. link. Pretty sweet deal but people beat me to all my keywords...

 

I dont mind at all. Good luck to you with that. Its a great way to get one way links if you're willing to put in the time to write quality content.