In the last ten years, organic link building has risen to prominence. Search engines like Google have clearly stated that these links have the greatest impact on rankings.
Long gone are the days of simply paying for a ton of links to be posted on loads of poor quality websites.
Instead, search engines like to see backlinks built because the website owner thinks they offer value to their audience.
That all sounds great, but it raises several questions for webmasters seeking to boost their rankings:
What does an organic link look like?
What is organic link building?
How do I build organic links?
This article aims to answer these questions and explain how you can increase your website’s rankings and traffic by building high-quality organic backlinks to it.
What is Organic Link Building?
Organic link building is when you earn backlinks from other websites without resorting to paying or exchanging backlinks. It’s sometimes called natural link building or earning links.
However, the definition of “organic” is blurry and means different things to different people. For example, will paying an agency to build links for you result in organic backlinks?
Most people in the SEO industry generally agree that organic backlinks fulfill the following criteria:
✅ Complies with Google guidelines: Google says that any activity aimed at manipulating search engine results contravenes its Search Essentials guidelines.
✅ Offer value: Your content should focus on providing value to readers. The link should be secondary.
✅ Relevant: Organic links usually mean that the linking websites and their content are relevant to each other. For example, you would expect a health blogger to list the top ten exercise apps, but maybe not the top 10 power drills.
✅ Not purchased or exchanged: Buy or exchanging links is common practice these days. It is perfectly safe and can result in high quality backlinks, as long as it is done correctly. However, links cannot be defined as organic if you have paid for or exchanged them.
✅ Not built using automation or AI: Many dodgy SEOs use AI or automation to build backlinks en mass. Not only is this against Google’s guidelines, but it usually results in poor quality links.
What Are the Benefits of Organic Link Building?
Organic link building brings several benefits, including:
Improved SEO
Because search engines prefer natural backlink profiles, organic link building often results in the following:
Increased website authority
Ranking higher in search
Increased traffic
Organic backlinks tend to last longer than those that are purchased or gained as part of an exchange. This is because they usually point to high-quality, evergreen content.
Lower cost
Although organic link building often takes more time and effort than other link building approaches, it can be cheaper, as you rarely pay for links.
This isn’t always the case, as creating content that people want to link to can be expensive. However, you’ll probably still get better value for money, as the links you build will be of greater quality.
Better brand perception
Organic backlinks are based on high-quality content, genuine relationships, and relevance.
These factors all contribute to your brand value, reflecting its credibility and professionalism.
Conversely, your brand will be negatively impacted if your website has many spammy comment backlinks or links from dodgy gambling sites.
How to Build Organic Backlinks
This section lists the techniques that best lend themselves to organic link building.
One of the main reasons people link to content is because it’s useful in some way, other reasons may include:
- The content includes guidance, advice or information that is relevant to their audience.
- The content substantiates what they are saying.
- It allows the reader to learn more about a subject.
- It shows them products or services that they may wish to buy.
If you publish content that’s genuinely valuable, then over time, it is likely to generate backlinks.
Below, we’ve summarized what good content looks like. Many of these factors won’t just help you attract organic backlinks—they will also help your content rank higher on search engines for relevant keywords.
Good content is:
✅ Expert-written: You should produce content based on your industry expertise. For example, if you’re a nutritionist, you should write articles about good eating habits and meal prep.
People would be less likely to link to you if you blog about the latest tech products. Why? Because this isn’t your area of expertise and so people don’t trust your opinion as much.
Essentially, you’re giving some of your expertise away for free. This article you are reading is a perfect example!
✅ Professionally produced: People won’t trust content so much if it seems amateurish. You should hire professional writers and graphic designers to help produce content. This will ensure it is easy to read and is free of mistakes.
✅ Provides original insight: Producing content similar to everyone else’s could get you some links, especially if it’s better written. But to really get noticed, you need to provide something new.
There are tons of ways to provide original insights. Examples include:
Original research.
Offering your opinion on a topic.
A new perspective.
Providing new examples or case studies.
Revealing something newsworthy.
✅ Contains multimedia elements: People’s brains can process visual information 60,000 times faster than text. Using video, images and other multimedia elements makes your content easier to digest and allows you to communicate your point faster. Readers find it more engaging and are likely to stay on the page longer.
✅ Goes into depth: Surface-level information isn’t as useful as thorough, in-depth content. Make sure you go into enough detail so that your content is genuinely useful to readers.
Build Relationships
Well, most webmasters know the impact that backlinks can have on rankings. Therefore, if a company they don’t know contacts them and suggests linking to their content, they assume it’s a link-building strategy and often ask for money in exchange (or they ignore it).
Organic backlinks are different. They often happen because webmasters know and trust the brand they link to. This is often because they have worked together in the past and built a relationship.
PR Link Building
Building relationships with other bloggers will get you some excellent organic links. But the most powerful backlinks come from media organizations.
Think news outlets like CNN and the New York Times. These are well-known brands and well-respected websites, and readers and search engines trust them.
