Over the past few months I have been hearing of various sites implimenting the anti-spam technique suggested by google. Sites like del.icio.us and wikipedia have now introduced the ‘no follow’ tag into their homepage. Anti-spam yes…..but as google page rank depends on the links its kinda cutting off your nose to spite your face? Or is it?

Google created the world of links SEO, forcing companies to use spam like techniques to get anywhere with google. So how does a company improve its position on the interweb?

We have gone back in time and now it is all about ‘Natural Linking’ - no automation, no spam and definatly not reciprocal!

Taking this from an enclick article byPaul Elosegui

1. Natural links are deeplinks. Links that point to specific material deep within the body of knowledge.

Deep linking is linking that points to a specific page or image within another website, as opposed to linking to a website’s main or home page. Deeplinking goes hand in hand with the long tail.

2. Natural linking is not reciprocal. Scientific papers are published sequentially in time. More recent papers reference older papers as they try and build the body of knowledge. Link exchanging, where websites exchange links, is not natural.

3. Natural links are built slowly over time. A seminal academic paper accumulates references, links, slowly over time. It is only well established highly regarded academic papers, like the discovery of DNA, that accumulate large number of references quickly.

4. Natural links make a point. Academics construct an argument around their references. So natural references are surrounded by relevant text and have specific anchor text, as each scientists tries to make his own point. The ratio of number of links to text has an upper limit, the density of links is relatively low, and the context surrounding the reference is relevant material.

5. Natural links come from everywhere. Scientists publish their research in many places. From important journals, like “Nature”, to less important conference proceedings. So, natural links come from varied sources of relevant material.

So unless you have a team of employee’s seaking out relevent links and communicating with webmasters peronally whats the fastest way to improve your page rank?

Spend alot of money….websites that have been arround a while will have the best page ranks in the end. I find this a good thing for the old school webby, but for new companies trying to get a grasp of the interwebby and improve sales, this is gonna hurt.

I am going to be watching this space, and I am going to work on my deep linking for my little business I wish to start up next year. I have 12 months, wonder if that will be enough time to get a decent page rank. I will probably make lots of web friends in the process!

I might even start a natural/deep linking experiment - leave a comment if you want to join or a link!