• About
    • History of Dallas SEO
    • SEO Expert Witness Services
  • Contact
  • Topics
    • Bing
    • Blogging
    • Branding
    • Domain Names
    • Google
    • Internet Marketing
    • Link Building
    • Local Search
    • Marketing
    • Public Relations
    • Reputation Management
    • Search Engine Marketing
    • Search Engine Optimization
    • Search Engines
    • Social Media
    • Tech
  • Advertise
  • Email Newsletter

Bill Hartzer

Bill Hartzer on Search, Marketing, Tech, and Domains.

SEMrush

Home » Search Engine Optimization » Is It Possible to Get Natural Links?

Is It Possible to Get Natural Links?

Posted on May 22, 2018 Written by Bill Hartzer

We all know that links are a must if you’re going to get good search engine rankings. Google’s algorithm has been centered around links to websites for years. In fact, since the beginning, links for ranking in Google have been important. And as Gary Illyes once admitted, they tried testing the Google organic search engine algorithm without links. And apparently that didn’t work out so well. So, you still need links to rank well in Google’s natural search results.

Jump To

  • Natural Links are Important
  • How Do You Get Natural Links?
  • What About the Traffic?

Natural Links are Important

Not every link is a good link. In fact, ideally, it’s the natural links to your website that are so much more important that links that you build yourself. Admittedly, Google has gotten better over the past few years at identifying good versus bad links. And with the Google Penguin algorithm being a part of the real-time Google algorithm (it has been for a while now), if you get some unnatural links, you’ll know pretty quickly, as your rankings will most likely go down or get worse.

You need natural links, ones that Google can’t identify as unnatural. So is it even possible to get natural links to your website?

Sure it is.

How Do You Get Natural Links?

So, how do you get natural links to your website? Concentrate on creating good content. Content that people want to share and people want to actually read. Yeah, I know, you’ve heard that over and over again. What you really need to do, though, is “blow up your industry”. I mean, write content that makes people in your industry say “wow”.

In the SEO and Search industry, it’s increasingly difficult to get natural links. It’s more and more difficult to get one of your competitors to link to you. So, you have to step up your game. The content game, that is.

And, I can honestly tell you that “link bait” and “click bait” type headlines still work.

Here’s an example of that.

I wrote a post about one month ago that ended up getting over 100 natural links to it. Some links are better than others, but many of them actually sent traffic to the blog post.

I did nothing except for sharing the post on social media. On my own social media accounts–I didn’t do any “black hat” or “gray hat” type of social media tactics, and did absolutely no link building to the post.

So what’s the results?

natural links

104 fresh links to the page.
31 unique domain names linking to the page.
Trust Flow 29
Citation Flow 30

The anchor text looks “natural”, as the links don’t use the same anchor text in the links. Although 10 sites actually use the same anchor text, which most likely is due to one person who owns multiple sites duplicating the content and linking 10 times.

anchor text of natural links

You can look up the links to that post and see the data. The above screen shots are from Majestic.

So, yes–it is possible to get natural links to your website. Just write great content–or content that people want to read, share, and link to. Here’s what Buzzsumo is reporting as the number of shares:

social shares natural links

In this case, it looks like about 2 shares on social media ended up being about 1 link from other websites. Every other time someone shared it, the post got a natural link.

What About the Traffic?

So, you’re probably wondering about the traffic to this blog post, and whether or not people were reading the post and engaging with it. We know they engaged with it–there are social shares. But what about the Google Analytics traffic?

google analytics natural traffic

Most traffic was direct to the site. Then, being mentioned in a newsletter sent the most traffic, followed by Twitter and some other articles that were written based on the post. Google ended up sending only 2 percent of the traffic to the page. So, I can honestly say that Google organic isn’t necessarily the best source of traffic nowadays.

Filed Under: Search Engine Optimization

SEMrush

About Bill Hartzer

Bill Hartzer is CEO of Hartzer Consulting, an SEO Consulting firm that includes services such as search engine optimization, technical SEO audits, domain name consulting, and online reputation management. As an SEO Expert, Mr. Hartzer frequently serves as an SEO Expert Witness and Domain Name Expert Witness in legal cases worldwide.

Recent Posts

  • ChatGPT Versus Google Bard: Which is Better? March 22, 2023
  • All Domain Names Need SSL: Parked Domains Are Losing Traffic, Revenue March 17, 2023
  • Google is Finally Sunsetting Google Glass March 16, 2023
  • Microsoft Teams Free Classic Shutting Down April 12, 2023 February 21, 2023
  • GoDaddy Customer Loses Domain Name Due to Auto Renew Fail February 9, 2023
  • dotDB is Not Shutting Down February 1, 2023
  • Someone Stole My Domain Name: Here’s What You Do January 4, 2023
  • Web Hosting Services Market to Grow to $254.86 Billion by 2029 December 13, 2022
  • This SEO Blog Post Was Written by ChatGPT December 8, 2022
  • Facebook Rolling Out Facebook Articles December 7, 2022
  • Doing SEO is Better Than… December 6, 2022
  • Tucows and GoDaddy Report Q3 2022 Results November 6, 2022
  • How to Measure App Events Sourced by Organic Search and SEO September 20, 2022
  • Google Allegedly Eavesdrops and Monitors the Brain 24 hours a Day to Control Humanity September 14, 2022
  • Why You Shouldn’t Hire SEOs Based on An Email September 13, 2022
  • Global SEO Market to Reach $122.11 Billion by 2028 September 9, 2022
  • Bluehost Launches New Commerce Solutions for WordPress September 8, 2022
  • Which CMS? How to Choose the Best CMS for Your Purposes August 29, 2022
  • Accidental SEO Manager: Interview with Ash Nallawalla August 15, 2022
  • Sometimes Google Isn’t Family Friendly August 1, 2022

US Agency Awards Judge

DFWSEM logo

Bill Hartzer is a Brand Ambassador for:



Industry Friends

I Love SEO
WTFSEO
SEO By the Sea
Jeff Lenney
Jeff Gabriel
Phil Drinkwater
Dixon Jones
Brian Hartzer
Navah Hopkins
DNAccess

Connect With Bill Hartzer

Bill Hartzer on Twitter
Bill Hartzer on Instagram
Hartzer Consulting on Facebook
Bill Hartzer on Facebook
Bill Hartzer on YouTube

Categories

  • Advertising (19)
  • Bing Search Engine (6)
  • Blogging (42)
  • Branding (12)
  • Domain Names (212)
  • Google (237)
  • Internet Marketing (25)
  • Internet Usage (85)
  • Link Building (53)
  • Local Search (39)
  • Marketing (182)
  • Marketing Foo (30)
  • Pay Per Click (3)
  • Podcast (18)
  • Public Relations (8)
  • Reputation Management (9)
  • Search Engine Marketing (44)
  • Search Engine Marketing Events (48)
  • Search Engine Marketing Firms (19)
  • Search Engine Marketing Jobs (33)
  • Search Engine Optimization (164)
  • Search Engines (204)
  • Social Media (192)
  • Tech (7)
  • Web Analytics (17)
  • Webinars (1)

Note: All product names, logos, and brands are property of their respective owners. All company, product and service names used in this website are for identification purposes only, and are mentioned only to help my readers. All other trademarks cited herein are the property of their respective owners. Use of these names, logos, and brands does not imply endorsement.




Hartzer Consulting



Website, Content, and Marketing by Hartzer Consulting, LLC.

Copyright © 2023 ·