If you can consistently "fake looking natural," that will always work. But think about how that sounds. Could it be that strategy itself is unworkable long term? Or are we straining to obey the rules and pleasing the SEO gods, and are thereby always going to be behind the eight ball, by the self-contradictory structure of our own plan?
I say concentrate on the traffic approaches that don't empower Google, from Web 2.0 to social media to bots, to getting no-follow links from sites that humans will follow, and so forth. Find non-SEO based ways to get good, sustained mass traffic. That's what works, and will keep working.