Romantik Design

Everyone expects of massive online success as soon as they promote their services and products online but there are few factors that can decide website’s popularity and longevity and needs thorough attention. Among them link popularity is the most important one.

In fact, the moment words link popularity passes through our sound receptors, our brain interprets us what it generally mean, but apart from that vague idea, you must understand few core facts on link popularity if you want to be a leader in search engine marketing.

Link popularity is the number of incoming links from potential partners to your website. More the one way link, more popular will be your website; more popular your website become, higher will be the chances of getting good page rank and good turn-around of Web traffic. Since good PR focuses on quantity and popularity of the links, it can help in attaining good position in search engine result page (SERP). If your website is placed in appreciable position, people easily find you as soon as they enter the Web world, view your services repeatedly and become potential buyers.

People often considers page rank (PR) and link popularity as the synonym of each other but this consideration is nothing more than a misconception because page rank is the software used by the Google to rank a Web page and it is a numeric value that determines the relevancy and importance of a Web page on search engine result page. PR is an important factor that facilitates link popularity because link popularity is determined on the basis of PR. Hence in order to get more link popularity, your website must be good enough to get suitable PR when search engine spiders visit your Web pages once a month (such process is called Googlebot in case of Google search engine).

Link popularity does not mean linking your website to numerous irrelevant website. Links must be developed with potential partners having similar interest like yours and more importance is given to one-way-link or incoming link rather than two-way-link or reciprocal link. In order to be benefited through link building, you must thoroughly check the PR and link popularity status of the approaching websites because if the website has zero PR then you will gain nothing from that link.

Another suggested factor in link building is the text used in links. Make your website links with targeted Keywords. In some other way, articles, forums and blogs posting is few appreciating technique of getting back links but make sure not to spam the process and submit relevant information in articles, blogs and in forums.

Hence, start making your website most desirous among your competitors; work on it, make it informative, content rich and link-worthy so that others may prefer linking to you. Be judgmental on quality than the quantity of the links. If you follow the process sincerely with an utmost desire to success, you will see your website gaining link popularity in each successive day.

So tell the truth, were you popular in high school? Did you have a lot of friends, and a wide social circle? Were you an athlete? Did your accomplishments extend far outside the halls of your alma mater to neighboring schools and counties? If so, then congratulations; you’re probably in the minority of those reading this article. What does this example have to do with link popularity you ask; more than you think.

Just as in high school, on the World Wide Web, your website is known by the company it keeps. Link to the wrong site or “hang with the wrong crowd” and you could be ostracized by the search engine community before you even begin. Achieve quality inbound links from a wide range of popular kids on the internet, however, and watch your site’s online profile soar. Sounds simple, and it is, if you know what to do to climb the online social ladder that is Link Popularity.

But before we get to that, what exactly is Link Popularity? Simply defined, Link Popularity is a measure of the quantity and quality of other web sites that link to your site on the internet at any given time. It is considered an off-the-page criteria that is greatly utilized by search engines to determine the overall importance and quality of your site to the online community. Because of its impartial nature, a site with a very high number of incoming links is usually viewed as highly relevant to the online community at large and thus highly visible within relevant search engine results. Whereas a content-poor site will attract fewer incoming links and thus hold little value to the same visitors.

What is the current link popularity of your site today? Take a moment to enter your site url at popular free link tool www.linkpopularity.com, then come back for the rest of this article…..

Still there, good! The results probably weren’t what you had hoped for though, where they? Not to worry; probably the biggest threat to you obtaining a high link popularity score for your site is relying on old information. To that end, below is a quick 10-step CURRENT process that can be implemented immediately to increase your site’s overall link popularity:

Step 1 – SUBMIT YOUR SITE TO OPEN DIRECTORY (DMOZ) AND YAHOO – Although neither of these sites are the 800 lb. gorillas they used to be, any link from these sites is going to increase your online profile immediately and very visibly. Find your appropriate category in both sites and submit for free with DMOZ and invest the $299 for a yearly indexing with Yahoo. Although DMOZ is still incredibly slow in adding new sites, keep at it, find the appropriate editor and send him cookies or flowers if necessary (couldn’t hurt?) then be patient.

Step 2 – ADD YOUR KEYWORDS TO THE LINKING ANCHOR TEXT – When at all possible, try to have an on-point relevant keyword phrase used as the linking text within any inbound link your seek for your site. If all you can manage is your site name or your url, that is certainly fine. But if you are selling toothbrushes to Eskimos, then “Eskimo toothbrushes for sale” as the linking keyword phrase from one site to yours is always the way to go.

Step 3 – WRITE ARTICLES AND SUBMIT PRESS RELEASES – Hey, look what I am doing right now! I could be watching ESPN, but I am writing this article instead. Write articles and submit press releases when you have a personnel change, introduce or upgrade a service or product or when you have a topic of interest you wish to share with the online world web community. Don’t have a blog? Get one! This is a simple way to get your articles and press releases out for indexing and review. Make sure to include links to your site where appropriate and watch your link popularity grow and grow.

Step 4 – FIND OUT WHO LINKS TO YOUR COMPETITORS – Go to Google.com and enter this into this search query: link:www.yourcompetitor.com. Do the same for Yahoo by entering linkdomain:www.your-competitor.com -site:www.your-competitor.com into the search field. Seek out the sites linking to your competitors and convince them to link to you instead. You win TWICE with this approach. You gain a quality link and an increase in your overall popularity while your competitor LOSES a link and achieves a lower popularity score in return.

Step 5 – CREATE AN AFFILIATE PROGRAM – Nothing generates quality, inbound links to your site faster than an established, commission-paying affiliate program. Whether your site is product or service-based, an affiliate program can be just the thing that takes your site and its link popularity to new heights. Visit www.CommissionJunction.com or www.LinkShare.com to set-up a new affiliate program of your design today and watch your online profile grow by leaps and bounds.

Step 6 – DEEP LINK YOUR SITE – This step is vastly overlooked by even the most savvy of online marketers initiating a new link popularity campaign. Make sure that links you seek out or solicit don’t just link to your home page, but ALL pages of your website. This process has numerous benefits including expanding your overall online link profile as well as generating unique Google PageRank values for each and every one of your site’s pages instead of just your home page.

Step 7 – SIGN UP ON GUESTBOOKS AND FORUMS – If you don’t participate in forums on your site topic or remember to sign-in when visiting a new site for the first time, now is the time to make such actions a habit. Always post a message or participate in a forum thread whenever possible and include a link to your site in your signature where appropriate. These “sig” files do get indexed and really add up, especially if the site forum in question is something highly regarded in your specific industry.

Step 8 – CONTACT RECIPROCAL LINKS BY PHONE NOT EMAIL – You would be shocked how successful this really is. More people are inclined to respond to your request when you introduce yourself by phone and let them know that you were visiting their site. Tell the person you are linking to their site, asking permission of course, and then politely ask for a link back. Cement the request by following up by email; then wait for the links to roll-in (oh, and get rid of the form letters; they don’t work!).

Step 9 – AVOID LINK FARMS AND LINK EXCHANGES – Reputation on the web is more important than ever. Again, just like friendships in high school, it’s better to have fewer higher-quality links to your site than hundreds of off-point, non-relevant links that do nothing to enhance the overall experience of the online community. Stay away, far away, from companies promising you hundreds of links to your site overnight. At best you don’t need the links, and at worst, you could be banned by the major search engines altogether.

Step 10 – DOWNLOAD THE GOOGLE TOOLBAR – This very simple technique allows you to view all potential link partners by the very important Google PageRank score (1-10) that is viewable in this browser. Use the toolbar to keep tabs on your own site’s PageRank score, than seek out complimentary, highly relevant linking partners that have a Google PageRank score of 6 or higher whenever possible. Convince a handful of high Google PageRank sites to link back to you and watch your site take off.

Remember, just like in high school, you and your site will be known by the company kept. Follow the simple, ten step plan outlined above, and you will be well on your way to achieving real, measured, lasting success online. Be the popular site on the block today; it’s easier then you think. Go ahead, be popular!

Link Popularity, the make or break element for Search Engine Rankings

Link popularity is the single most influential factor for determining how well a web site will perform in search engine rankings. A web site’s link popularity is computed from the number and more importantly, the quality of links pointing to a web site.

Link Popularity history:

To gain a better understanding of link popularity it is useful to know why it became so crucial for search engine rankings. In the past a web page’s ranking was determined, amongst other factors, by the number of keyword occurences within ‘on-page’ elements i.e. in page text, META tags, title tag. When web developers learned that they could trick a search engine to return their web pages by cramming keywords into their pages the search engines had to get a bit smarter. They were using ‘on-page’ elements to determine relevance so it was only natural that they would look to elements out of direct control of the web page creator i.e. ‘off-page’ elements. Search engines made the assumption that the greater the number of links from other sites pointing to a web site, the more popular the web site is and therefore a more quality resource. This worked nicely in theory but in practice it was also to be abused.

Web site owners figured out many ways to get links pointing to their web sites one example of which was through the use of link farms, pages the contained nothing more than a collection of links, Quantity of links was being abused so the search engines made use of the old saying “quality not quantity” and began to assign a quality factor to each of the links pointing to a web site. Now web sites that had a higher number of high quality links were looked upon favourably by the search engines. Building link popularity became a science in itself and today is still the most time-consuming and frustrating activity for a search engine optimizer.

Main classes of links:

Note: In the following examples SiteA is our web site and SiteB is an outside site (i.e. a web site under a different domain name than SiteA).

Inbound links:

Inbound links to a web site are links that originate from an outside web site . An example would be a link on SiteB pointing into a page on SiteA.

SiteA SiteB

There are two further classifications of links:

Reciprocal links:

An example of a reciprocal link is when SiteA links to SiteB AND SiteB links to SiteA, the link is reciprocated by both parties.

SiteA —–> SiteB

AND

SiteA

One-way links:

An example of a one-way link is when either SiteA links to SiteB OR SiteB links to SiteA, it is one-way only.

SiteA SiteB

To achieve a high link popularity the type of links to build are inbound one-way links. This simulates how natural links are created i.e. links that people create to point to your site because they found it worth linking to.

For outbound links it is natural to assume that they might decrease link popularity of a web site but this is not true. You do not give away your link popularity when you link to another site. They do not add to your link popularity though.

Reciprocal links can add to your link popularity if the web site that you exchange links with has a higher link popularity than your site. However they are not as powerful as inbound, one-way links as they are quite artificial in nature i.e. most probably created by communication between the owners of both sites.

How to build link popularity:

So it is quite obvious that to help build up a nice link popularity many inbound, one-way links need to be created. This can be achieved in a number of different (and most importantly, legal) ways:

Directories:

Directories are categorized listings of links from around the web. Many, many directories exist and vary in their methods of getting your link posted on them. They provide a great source of quality inbound, one-way links. Getting listed in quality directories such as DMOZ or Yahoo can be more beneficial for your link popularity than a lot of links from smaller, newer directories. Directories are discussed in my Directories article

Great site content:

The most powerful way to get inbound, one-way links is to have great site content that other web sites will want to link to. This allows you to get links from sites other than directories, which can definitely be better. The best thing about this is that it requires no communication on your part, it just happens naturally. If your site has poor content then others sites may not link, including the directories. Most of the top ranking web sites today got to the top because of great content. Writing interesting and informative articles for your web site is a good way of getting these kind of links.

Emailing web site owners:

If you come across a listing of links on a web site other than a directory e.g. a links page on a somebody’s personal web site, it can do no harm to write the web site owner a polite email requesting a link to your site from their page. They may request a reciprocal link in return but sometimes they do not and you can get a quality inbound, one-way link for your efforts. I have got many links in the past using this method. In my email I always ask them to visit my site first before making a decision to link and I personalise each email with a comment or two about their site.

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Summary:

The best and most effective way of increasing your search engine rankings is working to improve your web site’s link popularity. This can be achieved by getting as many inbound, one-way links as you can from quality sites such as directories. Other ways to get these links are having great content on your site and requesting a link to your site from other web sites.

Increasing link popularity is a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating process but is definitely worth the time and effort when you see a dramatic increase in traffic.