Link Popularity
Category: Linking Strategies
Link popularity is one of the major factors used by search engines to determine a website’s popularity and position in their search results.
Search engines continuously spider the World Wide Web caching websites and their content. They follow newly found links to other websites and normally rank them in their search results based on a host of algorithms including link popularity and content.
The more inbound links a website has the higher the position it will achieve in search engines search results. This is not to say that this is the whole scenario as an inbound link from a major website would carry far more weight in the eyes of search engines than an inbound link from a lesser popular website.
It is not the amount of inbound links a website gains to give it link popularity but, the quality of the links to the website that is more often so used by search engines to determine a websites rank in their search results.
All of the major search engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live actively crawl websites that have inbound links as they believe these links are a way to help them measure how relevant a website is.
With the above in mind, search engines use link popularity as one of the ways to give higher search engine results as in theory website owners and webmasters alike will only link to good sites rather than poor quality ones.
Two types of links which can help increase a website’s link popularity are links from a same themed website with similar keywords phrases and, links from niche directories or directories with same themed categories.
One of the most effective ways to build long term link popularity is to provide high quality. By providing exactly what your visitors are searching for and being well versed in your niche will entice other website owners to freely link to your site as they will be only too happy to have some type of association with leaders of your niche.
There are a number of ways website owners can build their link popularity as listed below but not limited to:
- Content Related Websites
- Blog Reviews
- Social Media BookMarking
- Article Distribution
- General Directory Submission
- Niche Directory Submission
- Promote RSS Feeds
- Press Releases
- Media Website Reviews
- Forums Signatures
Orrymain
26 Sep 2009
This is all good information and is excellent advice for all of us who are trying to get our websites and blogs explored more by other people. Help like this is always welcome.
busybee
28 Sep 2009
I love article marketing for getting good backlinks. If you write well, other webmasters will use your article with your resource box on their sites. They aren’t going to use an article that is not related to their own content so these are almost always very targeted, relevant sites. Plus you get the direct traffic from the directories if you do a good job with the article.
tongyun
29 Sep 2009
This is where it pays to be a good writer or hire a good writer. If you have a site that has poorly written articles, no one will be interested nor will you be taken seriously. However, if you come across as an authority, webmasters from other sites will love your work.
Heather
6 Oct 2009
Please forgive all my questions, but I really would like to learn this. Are you saying that google is looking for other sites with links to my site? And is that why you see people asking you to link to them?
Mockingbird
6 Oct 2009
You have to be very careful with backlinking, you can end up actually hurting your ranking if you end up in places that are to dilute content wise. Relevance and site rank come into play, use the google rank tool before you set in your links. The downside is you have to keep on farming. Sometimes you would be better off buying static ads
vttop
6 Oct 2009
Of all the methods listed in the article , the ones that appeal to me the most are article distribution and niche directory submission. Google considers both these methods natural listings because the motive is to get your site direct exposure in the article directories and niche directories. Of course it additionally helps your search engine placement, but that’s a by-product and the site doesn’t get penalized for it.