What is natural linking? That is an easy question to answer. Natural linking occurs when someone places a link to your blog from another site or blog. The reason that someone might link to your blog is not really important, the fact that they placed the link is the only thing that matters.

Some of the reasons that someone might place a link to your blog or to a page within your blog are:

1) Your blog offers some information that supports a fact or reinforces a position contained within another site.

2) Your blog offers some tools or resources that would be helpful to others.

3) Your blog contradicts a common misconception that others want use to validate their own views on that topic.

4) Your blog represents a controversial viewpoint that others might want to showcase for their own purposes.

5) Your blog is just so very cool that others need to be made aware of it and seeing as my website links to your site, my site must be cool too!

Regardless of the reasons why someone might be linking to your blog, these natural links are very important. Even if someone is linking to your blog because they think it is a sad joke and they want others to see how bad your blog is, it really doesn’t matter.

Knowing that these types of links are important the next question is, “How do you get people to link to your blog?” There are several ways you can get people to link to your blog with the easiest being, make a useful blog. Easier said then done you are thinking eh?

When you think about it, creating a useful blog isn’t that difficult, it just requires time. Time to find helpful tools to share with others, time to find sound advice regarding your blog’s topic of interest and time to make your blog ooze the “It” factor. The amount of time it will take is solely dependent upon how much effort you want to put in to it.

OK, so you finished your blog, now what? How do you let people know that your blog is ready to amaze others? There are several ways to let people know about your blog. If you have a budget set aside you could set up a PPC campaign that may bring in some traffic. You could join groups or forums that share your interest or even better, that are totally opposite to your blog’s message or theme. Perhaps one of the best ways is to write articles that others can use on their sites that are seeded with a few well placed links pointing back to your blog.

One of the next big trends that is about to take off is, the “Bartered Link”. Bartered links are where you offer space on your blog to host an article written by other webmasters, which contain text links to their sites in exchange for a one way link back to your blog. Are bartered links considered to be natural links? If they aren’t then they sure do a fine job of mimicking them.

Regardless of the motivation behind someone linking to your blog, even if it is because they think your blog is bad or your opinion is wrong, just remember this… the fact that they did is all that truly matters as the link is the thing.