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"What is Link Popularity?"
Link popularity is simply the total number of web pages that
link to your web page. Link popularity is an extremely
important factor that is used by most of the major search
engines to rank web pages and web sites. In general, the
major search engines consider link popularity a key factor
in their algorithms to determine the relevancy of your web
page to a particular keyword search query.
Good link popularity is important because it can increase
the visitor traffic to your web page. The reputation of
your web site (i.e., votes of confidence from other web
sites) is a measure of the site’s link popularity. Your
web page rank (i.e., the position your web page occupies
in a search engine’s results page) to a particular search
query can be improved by increasing the number of relevant
and quality web sites that have incoming links to your web
page.
An incoming link is considered to be relevant if it is
meaningful and relates to your web page. If you sell golf
clubs online, relevant incoming links could be from: golf
club manufacturers, golf apparel sites, competitors, golf-
related directories and so forth. In addition, internal
links (links from web pages within your web site) are
considered relevant and essential because they help your
web page visitor to navigate your web site.
It is not enough to just have web page links coming into
your web page (link popularity). The quality of the
incoming link is also critical. A search engine will put
more emphasis on a high quality web page (ranked high by
a particular search engine) than on a low quality web page
(ranked low by a particular search engine). It will take
many lower quality incoming links to approach the level of
a single high quality incoming link.
The major search engines do more than match the content of
your web page to the keyword search query to determine if
there’s a good match for a particular search. They look
at the quality of the links to your web page. The reason
is because there are thousands, if not millions, of web
pages that contain the search query’s particular keyword
or keyword phrase in the web page content. The search
engines want to deliver a list of relevant and ordered
web pages to meet a user’s query search.
In addition to the link popularity, search engines also
look at the anchor text contained in the incoming link
to your web page. It will consider your web page more
relevant to the keyword query search if the text in the
incoming link to your web page contains the queried
keywords.
The number and quality of incoming links to your web page
can be an excellent source of targeted and consistent
visitor traffic to your site. In addition, search engines
are more likely to index your web pages on a more frequent
basis if you have many incoming relevant and quality links.
The search engine spiders have a higher probability of
finding you through the external incoming links to your
site as your link popularity increases.
Reciprocal linking or link exchanging involves another web
page linking to your web page and you linking back to
their web page. If you select targeted and relevant web
pages to exchange links with then you have a higher
probability of gaining increased visitor traffic to your
web page. In addition, your web page ranking on a search
engine keyword query is also likely to improve as mentioned
earlier.
Your overall marketing plan should include a link exchange
campaign to help improve your search engine rankings and
the visitor traffic to your web page. Spend the necessary
time and energy to locate and exchange links with link
exchange partners that provide a good match with your web
page. Review the potential link partner’s web site theme
and content to determine if their link would be relevant
to your site. Consider only those web sites as exchange
partners with themes or topics that complement or relate
to your web page.
It is important that you have a good link exchange strategy
in place and a process to manage the reciprocal links. Don’t
link to a web page if they are not linking back to your web
page. Link exchange campaigns require your attention and
monitoring. You can perform the link exchange management
manually or you can use a computer program that will do it
for you.
There are a number of good programs that perform link
exchange management functions. However, there are some
programs that do a poor job. For example, some management
software programs will perform automated search engine
queries to harvest prospects that are not relevant for
linking to your web page. Do not use “link farms” in your
link exchange campaign. These sites provide hundreds of
non-relevant links with no meaningful content to your
site that the search engines can detect and potentially
use to ban or penalize your site.
The vast majority web site owners that participate in a
link exchange program do not understand the issues and
benefits of the exchange. As a result, they do not
maximize the potential value to be gained from the link
exchange. Learn and implement the proper strategies and
your web page will potentially benefit from improved
search engine ranking and increased targeted and qualified
visitors.
Every web site that provides links to other web pages
should have a links page. Your links page will be an
excellent resource for the visitors to your web site.
Your web site will be more helpful and credible to your
visitors if you provide useful and relevant links on your
links page. You can start utilizing the power of your
links page when it becomes a service to your visitors
rather than a tool to obtain higher search engine ranking.
You need to categorize your links if you have a lot of
outgoing links. Don’t try to put all your links on one
links page where it has the appearance of a link farm (i.e.,
no valuable content or relevance) to the search engines
that want to index the page. Create a useful links page
that shows only the link categories with separate links
that take your visitor to an individual link page for each
category. The intent is to provide a resource for your
visitors that is useful and can be easily navigated. Search
engines love this type of structure that they can fully
index.
The incoming links to your web page and the outgoing links
to other web pages should be structured in a clear manner.
Provide your link exchange partners with the exact HTML
code to be included in the link on their web page. This
code should include your URL, your anchor link text with
the appropriate keyword or keyword phrase and a concise
description that incorporates your web site name and the
appropriate keyword or keyword phrase.
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Web Site:
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