Building natural links is a fantastic way to build your business. If you have a serious web site, which has something serious and valuable to offer, then every single link you build is a whole network of opportunities.

A crappy link, on the other hand, artificially developed, is nearly the opposite.

It’s a healthy approach to think of your link network as a living, vibrant creature. Links grow by themselves. You do need to feed and water them in order to keep a healthy rate of growth, but they can grow on their own.

Every link to your site is an opportunity to build more attention. Each link offers three core benefits:

• The link increases the likelihood your site will be found through search engines.
• It creates the possibility your site will be visited from the linking site.
• It advances the likelihood that somebody else will link to your site.

Your links are opportunities to create more links.

People have a natural tendency to find leaders. They are searching for a person with authority — and they require evidence of that authority. Links are evidence. It may be very difficult to find the first link — that’s why simple directory submissions can be the best way to get started in link building. However, once you’ve developed a few natural links, more are likely to follow.

Voluntarily provided 3rd party links are the best. From a social and possibly algorithmic standpoint, they give the appearance of being the most authentic and authoritative recommendations of your site. Somebody’s considered opinion went into that link, which gives it great substance to a reader’s perspective.

But there’s a tipping point. One link, unless it’s truly exceptional, is not likely to send hordes of screaming fans to your virtual doorstep. You need to participate in the experience of creating yourself as an authority:

1. Create great content.
2. Participate in online discussions of your subject.
3. Speak when you’re knowledgeable; read when you’re ignorant.

If you build a strong natural linking profile, it’ll grow on it’s own. People will find links to your site, they’ll determine you’re an authority, and they’ll link to you because of your perceived authority.

Questionable links, however, will not in any way serve the same purpose.

Obviously purchased links, spammed links, cheap and dirty directories — these can potentially drive traffic or attention. But they will not in any way create authority. What is lost with these methods of link building is the potential to let your links grow.

And there are a few other things I fell down on, too…

For example, next week I’m going to be at SES Chicago. I managed to get my plane ticket squeaked in there…but didn’t get around to calling the hotel until last night — and there aren’t any more rooms.

Whoops.

So…anybody need a roommate? Or know of a good, reasonably close alternative hotel?

Edit:

Thankfully, Kayak.com came to my rescue: I won’t be AT the Hilton, but I’ll be just down the street: I think I can manage 3 tenths of a mile walk!

I’m far from the most qualified to write about this – I’ve never met Danny, so really I’m just going to point to a few other sources:

• Barry Schwartz, SE Roundtable
• Cre8asite Forums Thread
• Search Engine Watch Forums Thread

He’ll still be busy – the Daily Search Cast will continue at it’s new location, and it’s hard to imagine that he won’t either be snatched up by some search company or start his own. Watch Daggle.com for information on Danny’s new activities!

• Interview with Mike Grehan
• Interview with Danny Sullivan
• Write THE BOOK on Google’s recent indexing changes
• Leave for vacation and see what happens (giggle.)

Matt Cutts has been a very busy man recently…

When somebody with as prominent a position in the blogosphere as Matt Cutts announces his vacation, maybe we should expect some bombshells in the information pool preceding the trip. Matt’s interviews and recent blog posts have certainly managed to provide plenty of food for thought in the next few days.

I was intrigued by his discussion with Mike Grehan on the concept of the "sandbox". It seems that the sandbox is significantly related to the concept of "trust". Google’s indexing process is closely related to their ranking process – when they trust a site, they index it more rapidly. This, naturally, applies to new sites just as well as older pages.

If you can build buzz for your site early – gain the trust and support of your industry quickly – then you can gain indexing and rank in Google quickly. If you are slower to develop your marketing prominence, then you’ll be indexed later.

In my mind, this is a great way of reducing the impact of spam on the web. No serious webspam is going to take the time or money to market their business so that they can gain industry trust. (And what is industry trust in the webspam industry, anyhow?)
It does have a potentially harmful effect on very small businesses – those without the resources or knowledge to build buzz.

However, as Matt also mentions (again), Google applies over 100 factors to ranking a website – no one element is critical. It’s the knowledge and ability to apply marketing leverage to these factors which makes search marketing valuable.

The news today is that Steve Berkowitz of Ask.com is on his way to Microsoft, where he will head up the MSN online services. He’ll be responsible for marketing, sales and business development for MSN and for Windows Live – although he will not be taking on product development.

Any luck, his first step will be start a consolidation of Windows search brands – I know that the Windows Live / MSN Search has me thoroughly confused! Why does Microsoft need two search portals?

Regardless, this kind of shake-up at both Ask.com and at MSN should make for some interesting changes to come.

One major problem is the baggage of past methods in search engine marketing. The environment of older search engines and the techniques to build that site became an enormous presence in the world of web design. The core belief was always building higher rankings for a site. All the marketing spiel grew around this essential intention – without consideration for the value of the site. What arose from this were dozens of questionable techniques which added to the ranking of a site without addressing the value of the site as an information resource.

The situation was untenable. What is lost when marketing is spent on search engines instead of people? This is where the idea of the Pinocchio effect comes in:

You see, deep down, search engines want nothing more than to be real boys (or girls). That’s right, it’s that simple. As search engine engineers gain more and more ability to tailor the algorithms, their ultimate goal is to help the search engines make choices the way that people do.

Jennifer Laycock

Search engines were once based entirely on numbers (well, technically, this is still true – but bear with me). They counted inbound links, measured keywords, and decided on a rank. And everybody knew it. The careful, considerate website with well-composed content was lost in a rubbish pile of empty spam tins.

So search engines have become more sophisticated – and will continue to analyze more and more carefully to try and keep their databases clean. In order for the search engine to be successful, they need to do the best possible job at delivering real content to their users. This means culling out those sites which attempt to artificially inflate their ranking.

Your ROI is not going to be based on how many hits you receive – it will be based on how many customers purchase your products. A site which is designed purely to appeal to machine-driven statistical algorithms is much less likely to appeal to a human visitor, and, in the long run, is likely to eventually scare away the more human-like machines.

The development of algorithms which can understand contextual uses of terminology, called latent semantic indexing, and the long tail keyword strategy have created an environment which favors natural language and consistency.