Natural linking refers to a pattern of visible, prominent, naturally occurring links that are the result of website content creators trying to add value to their website.
Natural links:
are surrounded by relevant text
include a mixture of anchor text
include a combination of homepage and deep links
are usually built up slowly over time
are from a wide variety of sources
have a high ratio of links from subpages
are not reciprocal
What is artificial linking?
Conversely, "artificial linking" are irrelevant or disguised links that add value to the link destination site, instead of the sites providing the links. These include paid links, link exchanges, "powered by" and "hosted by" links.
Artificial links:
are surrounded by little or no relevant text
are surrounded by navigation links
typically have a high ratio of identical anchor text
often are not in context with the webpage content
typically point to the homepage
spring up over a short period of time
often come from a large number of webpages in a small number of sites
have a high ratio of links from the homepage of websites
are often reciprocal
are at the bottom of the page
What are link triangles?
A link triangle is a concept devised to evade the detection of reciprocal linking patterns by search engines. With a link triangle, page A links to page B, page B links to page C, and page C links to page A, as illustrated below:
It is certainly an interesting concept, and one that may well fool the search engines if implemented properly with natural linking strategies.
Is there any difference between linking virtually hosted domains and domains on dedicated IP addresses?
None whatsoever according to Matt Cutts, head of the Google's Webspam team. Matt says, quote, "Links to virtually hosted domains are treated the same as links to domains on dedicated IP addresses."
DEFINITION URL Canonicalization is the process of picking the best URL when there are several choices.
Should I link to the www or non-www version of my domain?
I would recommend picking the www version and always use that in internal and inbound links.
Do not think that www and non-www version of a domain is the same. For example, most people would probably consider these URLs to be the same:
www.yoursite.com
www.yoursite.com/index.html
yoursite.com
yoursite.com/index.html
Technically they are all different. I have often encountered the dreaded "cannot find server" error message when entering the non-www version of a domain name into a web browser, only for the site to appear when I try the www version.
Make sure your webmaster sets up your site so that it appears when someone visits either the www or non-www version of the domain.
I often come across internal homepage links pointing to various URLs, including:
index.html
yoursite.com
yoursite.com/index.html
www.yoursite.com/index.html
Stick to one URL, such as www.yoursite.com, instead of all those variations above.
