Can Natural Link Building Really Happen?

Darren Rowse of Problogger fame sent out this tweet this morning:

for the record – I don’t exchange links with anyone. I link to sites I think are useful to my readers and let link building look after itself

That might work well for Darren, but what about the rest of us? Can we rely on link building to take care of itself?

Naturally, natural link building for search engine optimization is preferable to trying to force a square peg into a round hole, but is it feasible to expect that thousands of other bloggers and website owners will link to you if you don’t have a name brand like Problogger? Sure, name brands are cool and if you’ve got one that is popular then you’ll get linked to, no doubt. But how many of us can boast that it has actually happened

You can go for the huge name brand if you want. There is nothing wrong with that strategy. But how do you get there? At some point you’ll need to decide to promote yourself using links and other forms of online media. Rarely does it just take care of itself. And link building has become such an important part of building a web business that leaving it to itself is not an option for most of us. If anything, we still need to blog and write articles to get some inbound links going. After all, you’re not Darren Rowse.

July 28, 2009
|
4 Comments
|
Link Building

4 Responses to “Can Natural Link Building Really Happen?”

Darren says:

July 28, 2009 at 5:23 pm

thanks for the post – I should probably clarify that by that tweet I meant that I just rely upon writing content that people will link to rather than swapping links with others to build my SEO.

I do build links, but not by asking for them – but by attempting to write engaging content. I’ve done this from the early days of my blogging – I didn’t always have a brand/name, but gradually over time when you write enough content that connects with people the links come.

Hope that brings a little more context to my tweet – sometimes 140 characters just isn’t enough
Nick Stamoulis says:

July 29, 2009 at 5:32 am

Thanks for the comment Darren! It makes perfect sense, content marketing does indeed lead to relationships, branding and links as well.
Anup Batra says:

July 30, 2009 at 7:34 pm

I am very inspired by Darren’s comment and Nick, you too write valuable content, which I am sure will get heaps of high quality links!

Cheers
Nick Stamoulis says:

July 31, 2009 at 5:58 am

@ Anup Batra – Thanks for the comment and the kind words!