Since the latest Google updates, it has become important more than ever the natural link building.
Rather than focusing on building links in a manual and artificial manner, natural link building focuses on producing the type of content that other websites will want to link, without actually asking directly.
Natural Link Building In Action
As an illustration of natural link building consider these two articles for a moment and ask yourself which one you’d be more likely to click through and read.
The first is an article entitled “How To Make Money With Adsense”, whilst the second is entitled “How A New York Marketer Makes $15,000 A Month From Home With Google Adsense”.
Even if the content itself was exactly the same, I think you’d agree that you’d be far more likely to click on the second article.
Furthermore I think you’d agree that, assuming the content of this article was good, far more people would share it on social media sites or mention it on their blogs.
It’s a perfect example of natural link building in action.
But why does it work?
The answer is “uniqueness”.
We all know that you can make money from Adsense and in your time online most of you have seen dozens, if not hundreds, of “me too” articles about Adsense. Then a basic article will no longer excites you.
What excites you, and indirectly leads to natural link building, is the unique viewpoint of an article like the second example.
Natural link building is all about producing such amazing content that other websites will want to spontaneously link to it, simply because they feel it offers their readers such great value.
As a result, it’s clear that if you’re serious about growing your organic traffic through natural link building, then you need to create less “me too” content for your site and instead focus more on content that offers something totally new and unique whilst still remaining on-topic.
Easy Content Creation Ideas For Natural Link Building
Producing top-quality, unique content for natural link building doesn’t need to be as hard as you might first imagine.
Certainly there are experts at natural link building that write incredible blog posts and attract vast numbers of links as a result, but articles are only one type of content you can produce.
1. Infographics
Infographics help us to visualize data in a new way – whether that is for clarity, for intrigue or for educational purposes.
Try hiring an infographic designer on the various outsourcing websites and even for a simple infographic you’ll often end up spending several hundred dollars.
Real “top level” infographics can cost into the thousands, but if you’re seriously considering the benefits of natural link building right now there is some good news for you.
Thanks to the power of infographics for acquiring links naturally, there are now a growing number of services that will let you create basic infographics yourself for free with no graphic design experience.
These tools online are all free, or offer free versions:
– Vizualize;
– Easel.ly;
– Piktochart;
– Visual.ly;
– InFoto Free;
– Venngage;
– Dipity;
– Get About;
– Canva.
2. Resource Lists
Unless you’re in a very small niche, there are probably all sorts of other websites around producing equally great content for your market.
One great way to create a unique and highly-linkable piece of content for natural link building is to produce a resource list that can act as a central “hub” of information on a subject.
Maybe you curate all the best YouTube videos on a subject, or link out to all those articles you have bookmarked and place all these links into a user-friendly piece of content that is both interesting and covers every element of the topic.
Not only are these incredibly useful for visitors and as a result will often get referenced by all manner into other websites, but additionally there is a chance of getting links back from the very sites you link out to in the first place meaning even more natural link building opportunities.
You should read : 9 Experts Share Their Best Ways to Get Web Traffic
3. Personal Experiences
Let’s end this article where we started, back with our New York Adsense guy.
Your experiences are unique to you – after all that’s why we call them “personal experiences” – but they can be of great interest to other people and a great tool for natural link building.
Many websites today are too heavy on theory and too light on practice and people are far more interested to learn from actual results rather than theory.
So tell your audience about a product that you used. Or a test you did. Or an experiment you carried out.
Tell people what you did, what the results were and what you’d do differently.
And remember that personal experiences don’t necessarily have to be positive for natural link building – if you tried something and it didn’t work that can almost be as useful or interesting as the things that do work.
Conclusion
Natural link building doesn’t need to be complicated.
In fact, for people who enjoy creating content, it can actually be great fun and highly rewarding.
Finally you can focus more on producing amazing content and let the links come to you naturally without having to “force” the promotion of your latest blog post or article.
What do you think?
Have you ever produced this kind of content?
Have you ever experienced great natural backlinks?
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below, thanks!
Try out these different types of content to see what works with your audience and you’ll not only boost your visitor engagement, but also your traffic from Google thanks to the ongoing process of natural link building.
Hey Erik,
Great write. I love infographic and I got to admit that I really dig into them! I am also preparing some time to create my first ever infographic but that is certainly one of my TO-DO in this month!
Can’t wait and thanks for sharing man. Top notch tips.
*Do I need to mention that I also going to share this around? 😀
Yes, natural link building doesn’t need to be complicated. In fact, it should be vital for online success.
The 3 types of linkable contents shared here are spot-on, and I couldn’t agree more with this fact we should “…focus more on content that offers something totally new and unique whilst still remaining on-topic.”
The examples shared absolutely brings clarity to the essence of this topic!
In kingged.com, this post was shared and I have left the above comment.
Hi Erik
Very relevant topic esecially after emergence of lot of conspiracy theories about Google ranking.
Natural link building simply needs quality post with the three tips you mentioned.
Sharing personal experiences on a topic in a blog post is a cool idea. If the experience is enviable then even its proper narration won’t matter a lot. Just simple to understand post for the target audience is sufficient.
Thanks a lot for another quite unique post on an important topic.
I found this post at kingged.com and also kingged it there.
Have a wonderful Wednesday.
Hiii..
This is very nice piece of information.Thank you for sharing such lovely article.
It’s easy being said but hard to do. See, natural link building is not only related with great content only. If you are saying so then you are fooling us .
If I have written a killer content today and I am a new blogger. Will I be going to get links for free? The answer is no. I have to market it a lot for many months. May be for one year or two .
AFter a ton of hardwork the steps you have mentioned here come handy. Otherwise, it is of no use.
What you say?
Hi Erik,
I am not frustrated. Sorry if my response was sounding so. I just shared my views.
Yeah 330 words are not a sign of killer content. I didn’t know that my recent post going to be linked with my comment.
Agree with you that one has to build connection. A lot has to be learn.
Sorry once again if I offended you.
-Nitin
Very informative and nicely written article. Personally I love resource list and case study based articles as a way of natural link building and mentions. Info-graphics are good and few people, I know personally, are using them as good source of link earning but I have not used info-graphics though I have plans to explore that in coming days.
Good info shared and a nice read for me. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Erik,
Maybe I’m being naive, but I don’t really care about Google all that much. Would I like the traffic from them. Of course I would, but I have to worry about building my community not satisfying a search engine.
With that said, I try to do a couple of things in each article when I link to someone. First, the link has to somehow relate to what I’m writing about. Second, of late I try to add context and an introduction of some type before offering the link, and then finally I want the the website owner to know what I’ve done when I share it out onto social media.
The key is that I try to offer value to both the reader and the owner of the site I’m linking to.
I really believe when this is done right it won’t matter what Google does because they want to see this type of natural linking to begin with.
Erik, your post was stimulating and insightful as always. I really enjoyed the back and forth between you and Nitin.
Looking forward to more engagement with you!
~ Don Purdum
Have to agree with your points Don.
I look forward to more of your posts Erik. The world needs more natural link building posts LOL. I just went back to the warrior forum a while ago (after a 2 year hiatus) and wow, it’s a mess.
Hi Dennis,
I haven’t used Warrior Forum much but I’ve heard a lot of people do. Why is it a mess in your opinion? I’m wondering if there is a benefit or if it’s a waste of time in your opinion.
Thanks!
~ Don
Hi Don,
Try looking in the SEO section there. Lots of people randomly spurting out gibberish.
It’s great to see some of the oldies still there and pushing real knowledge but many of the current regulars are pushing for the wrong things, misleading new users.
I think it wont be a waste of time if you can spare the time to contribute. I think it’s a good time right now to stand out there and build a following.
Ill try to visit again next week and make time for it. See what else I can find out.
Hey Erik,
I can definitely back you on this. One of the biggest change I did this year compared to last year was embedded a couple of infographs to some of my posts. After I did that, I started to get more traffic coming my way. it’s amazing how this one little action can make a big difference for traffic and for linking. I haven’t created a resource list yet, but that will be my next big thing!
Thanks for sharing and I hope you’re having a great week!
Hi Erik,
This is very interesting post. Link building is very important for a blogger and I shall say, uniqueness is the only one way for that. We can rely on personal experience to write an awesome post. As you said, such experiences are unique to us.
Infographics may bring good traffic to the blog. But unfortunately, free resources are not enough to create links as they are used by hundreds of sites.
Hey Erik,
Great post here. I’ve yet to create an infographic. I’m actually really excited about creating one and finished some content that may benefit from having that, so I’ll look into it. You shared alot of options anyone can use in how to create it, so I;ll have to check those out. I was originally going to just get it done one Fiverr or something but those links you shared are worth checking out.
The personal experiences point is good … especially if it’s a case study. I’ve yet to do one of those as well. I never thought about it but I’m thinking of it more and more now and it’s something on my to-do list.
Hope you have a great day.
– Andrew
Truely a very good article on different tips with linkable content. After reading your post,thanks for taking the time to discuss this content.