The Right Soil for SEO Growth: A Guide to Natural Link Building

Link building done the right way doesn’t just boost visibility, conversions and authority. It positions your brand as the go-to choice when people need your products or services.

In other words: trust.

Yes, natural link building takes time. But if you want to be in the driver’s seat in your niche, you can’t fall for shady SEO tactics, unethical practice, or “hacks”. 

So how do you build natural links? And how do you earn trust?

Imagine you have a garden with different plants and flowers you want to grow. You could use cheap, low-quality soil from a random supermarket. Or, you could invest in rich, nutrient-packed soil that gives them what they actually need to flourish.

You can trust that soil in a completely different way than the other, cheaper soil.

Okay – less talk about plants!  🙂

What I am trying to say here is that natural link building is all about respecting the process, not chasing shortcuts. 

 A natural backlink means another website genuinely finds your content valuable and links to it organically. No tricks, no third-party involvement – the value proposition is 1-1.

Backlinks that follow the steps of prospecting – outreach – pitch cycle are not manipulated – they are as close to natural links as you can get. And Google loves them.

Both Google and LLM:s (large language models like ChatGpt) rely on credible, high-quality sources – and natural links play a big role in deciding which websites are trustworthy. Google favors links that are earned organically.

These types of links:

• Come from credible sites that genuinely find your content valuable.
• Fit naturally within the context of the referring website.
• Help users find useful information, instead of existing just to improve rankings. 

You need good soil and you need good link opportunities! Good as in white-hat strategies that respect Google’s guidelines.

Down below I list a couple of strategies for natural link building:

I can not stress enough the importance of “leaving the building” or the computer and actually go out and meet people. Backlinks and the whole concept of link building is per se very technical so it’s easy to forget the human aspect of it all. 

Talk to people, network – engage with peers in your industry – and expect nothing in return. 

In a strange way, this will often lead to interesting collaborations that go beyond backlinks (plus you will probably get some really relevant and solid links).

The right way is to understand the audience of the site you are writing your piece on. This means that whereas you want to promote your brand you need to take a step back and ask “why should this website’s audience care”?

Ideally you also want to find some logical crossover between the site where your article will be published and your own and your audience.

Again, it’s easy to get lost in the maze of technical jargon but I am a firm believer in the human aspect of doing business, to show your personality when doing outreach. 

Especially in these AI-times, show people that you made an effort, show people why they should care about you and your offer.

If you want people to find, share and link to your content, you need to give them a reason to do so.

This means creating content that journalists, industry leaders and bloggers want to reference. This approach requires quite a lot of planning but I will break it down:

Step 1) Identify what drives engagement in your niche

Before you even start writing, analyze your niche:

• What are people talking about on X, Linkedin and industry forums?
• What are journalists/thought leaders writing about in your industry?
• Where can you provide new insights, fresh data or a unique perspective?

Step 2) Make it newsworthy (and a bit quirky)

The quirky part is not applicable for all niches but I’m generally a big fan of it. Also,  journalists and industry professionals love content that is packed with data:

• Use statistics and studies – move away from “I think, I believe”
• Break down complex ideas into compelling points
• Present new findings that industry leaders haven’t seen before

Example: One person that I admire and who is very good at this is Oli Baise.  He helped a whiskey retailer land a DR 79 backlink by analyzing 23,425 Spotify playlists that referenced drinking or partying – determining the top drinking songs and genres people listen to while they drink.  

Such a smart way of creating a fun and shareable content piece (and that will generate a lot of backlinks!)

Step 3) Position your content for maximum visibility

Creating quirky and shareable content isn’t enough – you need a strategic outreach plan so you get in front of the right people

• Pitch key journalists and bloggers who write about your topic.
• Use social media! Especially LinkedIn and X – to spark discussion.
• Leverage partnerships and industry influencers to help distribute it – use your current network.

This will not only attract natural links, it will lead your company to become a trusted source. Because again – we may chase backlinks but at the end of the day you want more money in the bank and more trust.

Not all links are created equal, and some can actually harm your website. Google’s Penguin Algorithm and manual review processes penalize websites that attempt link manipulation.

Red flags include:

Over-optimized anchor text –  this means that the clickable text (the actual backlink that will lead someone to your website) is keyword-stuffed and doesn’t look natural

Link exchanges: when pages are created to generate link exchanges with completely unrelated websites

Low quality sources – links from completely irrelevant sites or spammy sites may trigger penalties.

Link schemes: these are various black hat-building techniques/using automated link building-softwares.

PBN/Private Blog Networks: these websites only exist to send out lots of backlinks meaning there is no real business behind it that sell products or services.

These shortcuts may work temporarily, but they put your site at risk – and once trust is broken, it’s very hard to rebuild it.

Natural link building is not about chasing numbers and vanity metrics – it’s about earning trust. It requires planning and can be tedious at times.

But even though it may be tempting to go into the supermarket and buy that really cheap soil, it will probably not be such a good idea in the long run.

The same goes for backlinks. You could head over to Fiverr and buy 5000 cheap backlinks, or you could go down the natural backlinks route and use some proper soil instead.

Natural link building is about building something that lasts. It’s about creating connections, proving your value, and earning trust – both from search engines and real breathing human beings. 

Because at the end of the day, trust is what turns a website into a brand, and a brand into an authority.