In this paper, dynamic modeling and position control of a nonlinear servo – hydraulic actuator system under variable loads is proposed. In dynamic model of the under studied system, governing equation of valve, leakage and friction is considered. To achieve to the desired performance of the system under variable loads with extend variation amplitude, a one control method is applied which is robust in the presence of the variation. Also, as a nonlinear servo hydraulic actuator system has a nonlinear dynamics and the extracted dynamic model is not accurate to proposed behavior of the system, one controller can be required which is robust against the nonlinearity and uncertainty effects. The controller should be having an appropriate response, more accuracy and stability. Regarding to position control of the nonlinear servo hydraulic actuator system in presence of variable loads, nonlinear controllers are designed using feedback linearization and sliding mode techniques. In addition, in order to show the robustness of proposed controllers, a time varying disturbance and noise are applied in the simulation and results of the simulation are compared with classical PID controller. Controller parameters is optimized using harmony search algorithm and simulation results show the outperforming of sliding mode control in spite of variable loads against feedback linearization technique and PID controllers.