Much has been said about the importance of a natural backlink profile since Google released the Penguin algorithm update. Is it possible to actively build links and still have a natural backlink profile?

In the news: Google releases a Penguin update, Matt Cutts says that it is okay to link to (some) spammy pages, Yahoo releases Axis and more.

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Much has been said about the importance of a natural backlink profile since Google released the Penguin algorithm update. Is it possible to actively build links and still have a natural backlink profile?

Real link building is more important than ever

The importance of link building hasn't decreased with Google's Penguin update. Actually, link building has become more important than before. The difference is that link spamming doesn't work anymore.

Blasting your link to thousands of sites and fully automated backlink networks have lost their power. Given the fact that these links never were useful to real Internet users, it's remarkable that Google took so long to devaluate that type of backlinks.

Link building is not about manipulating search rankings (surprise)

Higher search engine rankings are a natural by-product if you build links correctly. The main purpose of link building (and SEO in general) is to get targeted visitors to your website.

Backlinks can help you with the following:

1. backlinks can increase the search engine rankings of your site
2. backlinks can help you to get targeted visitors
3. backlinks can help your company reputation

If you focus your link building activities on 2 and 3 then 1 will come naturally.

Link building can lead to a natural backlink profile

The reason why some people think that link building leads to an unnatural backlink profile is that they confuse link building with link spamming. SEO is not spamming and the whole SEO industry has suffered a lot from people using the term 'SEO' to sell their spamming products.

The key to a natural backlink profile is a simple question: "Could the link exist without asking for it?" Many people just don't link to your site because they don't know it or because they don't have the time to research links about a topic.

Help these people who would naturally link to your site by informing them about linkworthy content on your site that is related to their site. Asking the right people for the right reason often leads to much better results than the scattershot approach that is used by many companies.

For the foreseeable future, good backlinks will remain the most important factor in Google's ranking algorithms. Use the link building tools in IBP to find good websites that could link to your site and then ask these sites for a link to your site.

The link building tools in IBP help you to find good websites, they help you to contact potential link partners, they keep track of your link building activities and they check the backlinks that you built with other sites. IBP offers spam-free SEO methods that lead to high quality links and lasting rankings.

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