For a long time now there has been a lot of talk about a difference between natural link building and the more forced version that is done by webmasters via the medium of directories, buying links and article marketing. However, is the legendary saying “build it and they will come” a truth in the online world or is it a myth?

So what is natural link building?

Natural link building is basically the idea that once you build  a site if it is popular than people will tell their friends, those friends will tell theirs and your website URL will be thrown around forums, blogs and email, giving you natural links from sites that find the information you have useful and thus link to it.

But, the idea of natural link building is kind of a chicken and egg argument as how can a person find your site if you have not already built the site up to rank better in Google? In truth there is no real answer, it’s more like a roll of the dice if a person decides to go to page 30 of their search to find your recently added link or not. So really building your own backlinks seems the smarter option as it seems faster correct?

Forced (unnatural) Link Building

The method of using web directories, blog commenting, forum posting and article marketing have long been used with the traditional SEO tools in order to build websites rankings in Google. However, are these links as valuable as natural links that ‘should’ appear on similar related sites?

Well in short people experienced in SEO say that having links from matching niches is a more valuable link, however, many people oppose this.

So in terms of which is better, natural or forced, there seems no right answer, perhaps; “build it and rank it so it will come” is a better saying to use when talking about the online world.