What Is Link Popularity?
Over the past year or so search engines have begun looking at a new criteria when determining rankings for sites. Actually, search engines are always adjusting their ranking algorithms which is one of the reasons why rankings fluctuate so often. Much of the criteria in determining page rank is on the page itself. These are things that you can do to your site that can help improve listings. However search engines have been adding additional “off the page” criteria that web site owners have little to no control over, such as how many visitors you get and how long people stay on your site. Of course these are all things you can manipulate, but of course you have no direct control over your hits.
Link popularity has become one of the primary “off the page” factors that search engines use. In a nutshell, link popularity is determined by the number of sites that have links point to you. The more sites linking to you the higher your link popularity. That, of course, is just the nutshell. In actuality, it is much more complicated as search engines put their own spin on their link popularity algorithms. I’ll address this in the next section below.
Not all search engines utilize link popularity as a determining factor, however it has grown pretty pervasive among the most important search engines. Some search engines, such as Google, will not add your site to their database unless you have at lease one incoming link from another site that Google knows about. Having a link is not enough, Google must KNOW about that link to your site. Because link popularity is getting more and more important, Pole Position Marketing includes a link popularity builder with each promotion package. You can also enroll in our link popularity program for as little as $30 per month with the first month free at www.polepositionmarketing.com/seo-sem/link-building.php.
Building Link Popularity
I mentioned above that link popularity is basically the number of links pointing to your site from other sites. In actuality, that is an over-simplification. Search engines look for much more than just the number of links, but they look for quality links pointing to your site. Links coming from sites that don’t get much traffic rate lower than links coming from sites that get a lot of traffic. Of course, this makes it all the more hard for the little guy out there, but then if you offer a quality product or service then you should have not trouble finding many quality sites willing to link to you.
Another important aspect of link popularity is keyword usage. If a site links to you by merely having your website name in the hyperlink, that rates lower than a site linking to you using your keywords in the hyperlink. Here is an example of each:
Visit www.yourcompany.com.
Visit Your Company for keyword 1, keyword 2 and keyword 3.
Having your keywords in the link pointing to you tells the search engine that these keywords deserver extra consideration when determining your site rankings. So the question remains, how do you build link popularity? There is no simple solution to this question or quickie link popularity builder. For the most part it takes a lot of time seeking out other sites who may be willing to link to you and making such a request, perhaps for a link back to them. Be sure to request that they utilize your keywords in the link for maximum effectiveness.
There are some tools out there that can assist in this massive process such as Zeus . While I have not yet mastered this program do to the shear time involved, I have heard it is the best tool out there. No, it doesn’t build your link popularity automatically, but it does help you find quality sites that might be willing to link to you, and helps you manage your contacts to them. A word of caution: There are many services out there such as link farms and FFA (Free For All) sites that claim to help build your link popularity, that actually do little to no good and may actually hurt your site rankings. I won’t go into detail on how they all work but search engines look for these bogus link popularity builders and many times punish a site for using them.
The importance of link popularity should not be underestimated. Take the time to go out there and build relationships with other site owners and request that they include a link to your site.