Building a Successful Link Popularity Strategy

Link popularity should be an integral component of your search engine optimization strategy.

What is link popularity?

In simple terms, link popularity is the number of links that point to your web page. Link popularity is a crucial factor, used by almost all of the search engines to rank websites. Each search engine, depending on their specific algorithms, determines it differently. If your link is included on a site that has high link popularity, it will help to increase the link popularity of your site as well. Conversely, if your link is on a site with relatively low popularity, it will give very little increase to your site's popularity.

Search engines don't just look at the content of a web page to determine if it is a good match for a search term. There are thousands and thousands of web pages containing the same keywords so matching a search term with a page's content is not enough to build an accurate list of relevant results to a search query.

This is why search engines also count the number of other web pages that "validate", by linking, that a particular web page is a good match for a search on certain keywords. You may look at each link to your site as a "vote" of approval. The more links (votes) you get, the better chance you will have in achieving high rankings on the search engines.

On the other hand, it is not only the number of the links that counts, but also the "quality" of the links. A link from a good quality site (with high link popularity) matters more than many links from low popularity web pages.

How does link popularity work?

Should you decide to build a link popularity program on your own, there are a few things you need to consider:

1. Conduct a search for web sites to link to. This is probably the most difficult task, as you'll be sifting through literally hundreds of thousands of sites. You will want to be trading links with relevant sites.

2. When you find a web site to trade links with, record all their information to refer back to: website address (URL), contact info, and a brief summary.

3. Contact the web site owner and tell them you have included a link to their site because you think it would be useful to your visitors. Include the URL of the page on your site where you have added the link so the site owner can see you have already added their link. Then ask whether if they would consider linking back to you.

Many Web sites have their own link popularity programs already in place and they may have a form for you to fill out prior to trading links. Be concise and, equally as important, be sure to follow up to make sure your link has been added to their site. If you find that a few weeks has passed and your link still doesn't appear on their links page, contact the site owner again before deleting their link from your site.

Why is link popularity important?

There are three key reasons why you should consider link popularity as part of your search engine optimization campaign:

1. Improved search engine ranking - Search engines use the total number of inbound links to your site to estimate quality and popularity of your site. This theory behind this is simple: The more pages that link to a site, the better that site must be. Therefore it is important to have a large number of quality links pointing to your web site.

2. More complete indexing - Search engine spiders will not index every page of a web site because the more pages they index, the less space they have for unimportant web pages. Therefore, sites that are less popular get the short end of the stick. However, by increasing your link popularity, your important pages have a greater chance of getting indexed.

3. Increased traffic - It's the simple principle of advertising. The more your site is advertised (e.g., linked on other sites), the more people will know about it. This is especially critical for newly established web sites. You've got something to sell but if no one knows it's there, your business will eventually die. By having other popular sites linking to you, you now have an entry point for potential buyers and search engine spiders to find your site.

The basic premise behind link popularity is this: The more links pointing to your site, the more popular your site is considered by the search engines. You will need to focus on getting quality related links pointing to your site. Remember, the more popular that site is, the better it is for you.