A lot of people are talking, and few of them know, the soul of 
a search engine was created in the blog. ;-)

There has been a lot of talk about Natural Linking. From Oakland 
(Ask Jeeves), Sunnyvale (Yahoo!) and Mountain View (Google), 
California, all of the search engine companies are talking more 
publicly about "Natural Linking":
http://www.free-seo-news.com/newsletter174.htm#facts


WHY IS LINKING IMPORTANT?

The whole concept of linking in the eyes of the search engine 
companies is that when Site A links to Site B, then Site A is 
making a personal recommendation of Site B. Because Site A is 
willing to put their reputations on the line to share the story 
of Site B, the search engines have determined that Site B MUST 
be of higher value than Site C.

Google established their PageRank system a few years back based 
on this conceptual idea. Over the past few years, the other 
search engine companies have began to adopt the linking model in 
their attempt to catch up with Google's lead in the marketplace.

Because the search engine companies want to provide the best 
possible results to their users for a particular search, they 
have all climbed on the concept of link counting to determine 
the value of the sites that they are recommending to their 
users.


WHAT IS NATURAL LINKING?

The idea behind "Natural Linking" is that you can have for 
example five people linking to the same site giving the site 
a recommendation via the hyperlinked text.

The hyperlinked text is any text that appears between the 
<a href=> and the </a> tags. When used in a HTML document, 
the hyperlinked text in the viewable webpage becomes a live 
clickable link like this: BloggerSupport.Com. When viewing
this link from within the HTML coding, it will look like this:
<a href=http://BloggerSupport.Com>BloggerSupport.Com</a>.

Each webmaster who decides to link to an invidual website has 
a different idea and reasoning as to why his or her visitors 
should look at the site they are recommending. As a result, each 
webmaster will outline their reasoning within their links to 
your website.

In our example, we have five Site A's pointing to Site B:

Example Site One will put the following on their site: 
<a href="http://BloggerSupport.com">Technical Support for Your 
Blog</a> 

Example Site Two will put the following on their site: 
<a href="http://BloggerSupport.com">Another Blogging Site</a>

Example Site Three will put the following on their site: 
<a href="http://BloggerSupport.com">Blogging Articles, Tips and 
Tricks</a>

Example Site Four will put the following on their site: 
<a href="http://BloggerSupport.com">Technical Services for 
Bloggers</a>

Example Site Five will put the following on their site:
<a href="http://BloggerSupport.com">Support Services for 
Bloggers</a> 


Each webmaster in this example has shown their users why they 
should visit BloggerSupport.com. In doing so, each of them has 
shown their link using their own descriptive text. It is this 
"descriptive text" that the search engines view as "natural 
links".

So, "Natural Links" are links that are created by individual 
webmasters and not by Site B's owner. In the eyes of the search 
engine programmers, these links will likely have a more accurate 
representation of the content that appears on a website. And the 
search engine masters understand that a stranger is always more 
honest in his representations than the webmaster trying to 
promote his own website.


WHAT DOES NATURAL LINKING HAVE TO DO WITH BLOGS?

Over the last few years, you have read many an article from 
people pitching the importance of the blog in the search engine 
optimization game. But, do you know why blogs have become so 
important to the search engine companies?

Natural Linking.

When all is said and done, the text within a link has been given 
more weight in the search engines than the real content on a 
webpage.

I heard the guffaws in the audience. I can see the look of utter 
disbelief on your faces as you site in front of your computer 
staring incredulously at my comments. ;-)

But, wait. I can actually prove this to you.

Come back when you are done, but do click this link to view 
the search results for the Worst President: 
http://google.com/search?q=worst+president

Did you notice the results in search result #1? Did you go to 
the webpage to see if you could find the word "worst" in the 
text? I did too. And guess what. I could not see the word 
"worst" in the text either.

The same search with a slight variation, searching for the 
Worst President in History puts the same page in search 
result #4. http://google.com/search?q=worst+president+in+history


THIS IS THE TRUE POWER OF BLOGS

The search engine companies put far more value in the natural 
link text than they put in the terms that show up within a 
webpage! The bloggers are the ones who have said that George W. 
Bush is the worst president in history. And, I will bet that 
they get a great chuckle every time someone like me points out 
their accomplishments.

The reason why the blogs are the best new resource of the search 
engines is because blogs use natural linking far more often than 
regular website pages.


THE CHALLENGES FACING US NOW

As we move forward to promote our website in the here and now 
and tomorrow, we must keep in mind the need for natural linking. 
The challenge for us is how to communicate our sales messages 
in such a way that links to our websites are perceived by the 
search engines as natural links.

As we face this challenge, we should consider giving other 
people more leeway in how they post a link to our websites. If 
you are using reciprocal links or paid advertising, you should 
by all means give the person showing your ad several choices for 
your advertisement. If you are using reprint articles to promote 
your online business, you should find a way to offer publishers 
and webmasters mutliple article resource boxes, or you should 
just give them more free reign in developing another natural 
link to your website.

Good luck in your linking endeavors. 

Bill Platt owns http://thePhantomWriters.com . He specializes 
in getting your reprint articles distributed to at least 17,000 
publishers and webmasters seeking good content. Pre-Written 
ghosted articles are now available for purchase. If you need help 
setting up your blog, please review his blogging services at: 
http://BloggerSupport.com