Search engines like Google do not determine the naturalness of a link by one parameter; plenty of issues are always taken into account. Let us take a look at a few factors and the impact of natural links on SEO.

Natural link: Anchor or image

Regular people don’t use commercial anchors when they send links to each other. You are unlikely to send someone a link with an anchor like ‘buy something cheaply.’ So, why should a search engine believe that you are using a natural link for promotion?

Therefore, use mostly non-anchor links. In addition, keep in mind that an anchor in the form of a picture or banner can be much better than usual text. Pictures always catch the attention of users, thereby increasing the number of clicks.

Nofollow, dofollow, and redirect links

Links should be of various technical implementations. If there are dofollow links only, this will be suspicious for search engines. Compare the link profiles of large projects, and you will see the great diversity of their link mass.

Without UTM-tag and other parameters for tracking

If you put a label on a link, and this link is dofollow, you make it clear to the search engine that it is set for manipulation, so it will not take into account such links.

If you want to track placement performance, use redirects or nofollow and apply any tracking tags.

Link indexing along with page indexing

If the link from the page appeared later than the page itself was indexed, this is not natural. Especially if there is a clearly commercial anchor.

If you want to get a link from an old page, on some projects, this is not a problem, but there should not be many such links, and their extraction must be done carefully.

The best option is when the link is indexed together with the page.

Link location

If the link to your site is in the sidebar or the footer of the page, this is suspicious. Especially when this link is with a commercial anchor and not thematic.

The best placement for links is in the body of the text. If it is an article, then inside the article, and if this is a message in the comments or on the forum, then directly in the body of the message.

Donor quality

It is important to evaluate the platform from where you get a link, its topics, and its audience. If you see that it refers to projects of prohibited topics or of dubious quality, we do not recommend contacting such platforms.

Use quality guest posting where you will be provided with sites with thematic content, links only to relevant sites, and a good audience.