Link Popularity

Increase & Improve Link Popularity Services.

What is Link Popularity :
In simple words, Link popularity is the number of sites who are linking to your site. It is the measure of how many sites on the Internet are linking to your web site, but it goes further than that.

Many webmasters who were thankful to leave concerns about "being popular" behind in high school are now learning that popularity is still important. Link popularity, that is. Led by Google, many search engines include your link popularity score in the algorithms they use to determine your site's rank.

Google started it, but more and more search engines are following suit and using link popularity as an important part of their ranking algorithms. Many webmasters responded by joining link farms and stuffing their sites with as many links as possible. But all links are not created equal. In fact, bad linking strategies may get you banned from some engines.

Quite simply, your link popularity score is the total number of external sites that link to yours. Link importance is closely related to link popularity, but with a twist. It looks at the type of external link and assigns higher scores to high quality links.

The Importance of Link Popularity Services :
Link Popularity is used by 19 of the top 20 Search Engines in their ranking algorithms. Recently, Search Engines are finding new ways to ensure relevant results for their visitors;.

Better Link Popularity can dramatically increase your web site traffic.

An ongoing link development campaign (at least an hour a week) is essential to website promotion; in fact it's the most basic aspect of promoting a site.

Link popularity analysis is one of the best ways to quantifiably measure your website's overall visibility. Link popularity refers to the total number of links or "votes" that a search engine has found for your website. Link Reputation takes into consideration what your link partners "say" about your site to the search engines. Some link partners are more valuable than others; for example, text-links that say the wrong thing "count" for link popularity but they can actually hurt your site's reputation – and get you penalized in the rankings.

Links from web sites with content similar to your own are much more significant.
Links from sites that also specialize in your niche market are more important because they will draw people who are more likely to purchase from you - the more links you have, the easier it is for people to find you. Having your site linked throughout your niche market is an important way to build name recognition and trust with potential clients who are already 'in the neighborhood'.

Links to your site will also boost your Search Engine Ranking, and help ensure you stay indexed by giving the Search Engine spiders more ways to find and crawl your site.

How to create Link Popularity :
There aren't any secrets to building your Link Popularity. After you've worked your way through any one of the free Link Popularity Development Tools, you were likely surprised to find out how many sites are linking to you - but the best information? Of course!! The list of web sites linking to your competitors! This is a great starting point to develop your own web site link popularity.

Once you see all this information, it's natural to get excited by the shear number new partnerships that are possible online! But before you try the latest mass-submission service, it's important to keep in mind that there are good links - and there are bad links.

When you seek link partners, review each site to see if they are a match for your product or service. Find out if they offer you good networking connections; including outgoing links to other sites in you niche market. And, most importantly, be sure that they are not link farms (explained below). Just as your ranking can benefit from other quality sites linking to yours, your search engine ranking can also suffer if you have a raft of artificial, or poor quality links to your site.

Which Links are more Important?
Link importance helps filter out the spammers who set up dozens of free sites and then link their bogus sites to the main Web site. Spamming is such a problem that some search engines don't count free Web sites at all in their link popularity scores.

Some of the more complex search engine algorithms combine link popularity with link importance and use it to assign a weighted link popularity score. The weighted score looks at two things: the number of sites linked and the relative importance of those sites. For instance, if CNN links to your site, that single link might count a lot more than 20 links from your friends' personal Web pages.

Check Your Link Popularity Score :
Check your Present Link Popularity Score from www.linkpopularitycheck.com
Also take time out to check your competitors Link Popularity. This will provide the fuel to the Fire.

Your link popularity score is a relatively objective measurement and you can check that with several search engines. However, there's no single way to predict what your weighted link popularity score is because each search engine uses a different algorithm to determine it.

How Does Link Popularity Affect Your Search Engine Ranking?
Your link popularity score alone won't determine your rank, but search engines increasingly use it to score pages because they consider it a sign of a high quality site. As Google co-founder Sergey Brin explains: "external approval raises a page's ranking."

That makes sense if you think about it: one site won't link to another site for no reason, so a site with a lot of external links must contain valuable content.

All search engines use different algorithms to rank sites, but most of the major ones consider link popularity in some form. Google uses link popularity almost exclusively to rank sites.

Google also recently partnered with Yahoo to provide secondary results for Yahoo's Web directory, so a high ranking in Google may help you in Yahoo as well. (To see secondary results in Yahoo, enter your search term, then click on the Web Pages selection on the top toolbar.) Most other major search engines also factor popularity into their algorithms.

Lots of links to your site can also improve your search engine ranking by keeping you in the search engines. As more sites link to you, the odds increase that search engine spiders will encounter your site regularly and be less likely to drop it from their databases.

Improving Your Link Popularity
The downside of link popularity as a ranking tool is that it penalizes new sites. Even if you have a terrific site stuffed with valuable content, it still takes time to publicize your site and collect links.

Don't wait for other webmasters to find you! Instead, search the Internet to find sites related to yours and compile a list of sites likely to be interested in linking to your site. For instance, a local land conservation group might put together a list like this: state and local hunting organizations; other environmental groups in the area; as well as city and county informational Web site pages.

Spend some time networking:
Email the webmaster of each site and briefly explain how a link to your site could benefit their visitors. Make this a personal appeal; don't send a general form letter because that is likely to be deleted at once.
Offer to trade links: include a link to them on your site first and include the appropriate URL in your message.
Suggest the section of their site where a link to yours would be appropriate.
Make it easy for them to link to you by including the necessary HTML code in your email.

Link Exchange Services On the Net :
While you network, consider registering with a link exchange service to quickly generate more links pointing to your site. Their operation is simple. You register your site with the service and the service adds you to the links page that other members place on their Web sites. Some services promise to add as many as 500 links pointing to your Web site within 30 days.

Most link exchange services are free, but almost all impose some restrictions on their members. The most common are:

You must display a specific icon on your home page that points to the links page on your site.
You must upload the updated links page to your site periodically (usually every 30 days) or be dropped from the service.
You have to agree to submit your site (including the links page) to search engines on a regular basis.

Before you register with a service, carefully study its rules and regulations to make sure your site is eligible (some don't accept adult sites, for instance). Also check to make sure that the links are relevant to your site content. Some search engines are beginning to penalize so-called "link farms" that don't add any value to a site.

Link Farms and their drawbacks ?
Link farm consists of sites that link to other sites for the sole purpose of increasing their link popularity score. Unlike perfectly valid links to sites with related information, sites that participate in link farming contain links to totally unrelated sites. This practice is also referred to as Link Stuffing.

Google hates link farms and labels the links they generate as spam. In fact, Google gates them so much that some sites get removed from the index if they're affiliated with link farms. Spooked, some webmasters are considering removing all outbound links from their sites.

That's an overreaction that decreases the site value to visitors and hurts the Web in general because cross-linking is a basic tenet of the Internet. Links are fine - even encouraged - if they are related to your topic, but link farms rarely provide useful content to visitors.

If your site is devoted to your favorite rock band and you include links to the band members' personal sites, other fan sites, and links to stores that sell the band's music, that's not a link farm. You're providing access to other sites that will probably interest your visitors.

But if you signed up with a service that promises to generate two hundred inbound links to your site only if you agree to add two hundred outbound links in return, then you've planted a link farm. Instead of linking to related information of value to your visitors, you're instead sending them to sites about herbal supplements, children's clothes, pet rats, and other totally unrelated (possibly X-rated) topics.

What different Search Engines have to say on Link Stuffing ?
Search engines have gotten wise to these techniques and are taking a hard line against them.

AllTheWeb's spam policy is to:
Disregard Link Stuffing when building the index and computing static rank, and to reduce the static rank of the documents containing it.

Google warns against "artificial linkage" (translation: link farms and link stuffing) and warns that if you link to spam sites, Google's algorithm may penalize your site.

AltaVista's spam policy warns that sites may be deleted from the index if they "contain only links to other pages."

Inktomi's editorial guidelines warn against "excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site's apparent popularity."

Search engines won't penalize you for good links, but they've gotten pretty good at recognizing bogus ones and are quick to punish sites that try to spam them with unrelated links.

Use Good Linking Strategies :
We can sum up a good linking strategy in a single sentence. Link to related sites that offer content, products, and services that will help and interest your visitors.

It's really easy to do:

Stay with your theme. Keep your links tightly focused on your site's topic and you'll avoid diluting the theme of your site. A coherent theme increases your search engine rank and helps visitors find the information they need.

Hang out with the popular crowd. Search engines don't just count the number of links; they evaluate the relative importance of inbound and outbound links. That's why link farms don't help you! It's far better to have 100 good inbound links from popular pages than 1000 links from a link farm stuffed with spam sites.

Avoid automated link generators. Automated programs that send emails to other webmasters and offer to trade links are rarely effective. A good linking strategy has to be personalized, so automated email messages that say: "Hi! Want to trade links?" rarely pay off. If you want to trade links with a site, send the webmaster a personalized email that briefly outlines why you like the site and how a link to your site will enhance it.
Regard your link-back partners as more than just a link. The most valuable asset you can build as a Web site owner is your partnerships and relationships with other site owners. Achieving a large number of links to your site will assure better long-term traffic flow than the search engines.

Make it as easy as possible for someone to link to your site; provide cut-and-paste HTML link-back code that Webmasters can easily add to their pages. Offer a number of images and text links to choose from. Remember, full-sized banners get very few clicks. In fact, a well-worded text link can draw more clicks than a full-sized banner. And, what's more, a text link doesn't impact a site's load time. 80x30 pixel buttons may perform well in link-back deals, particularly if you have an eye-catching design.
Note: Always offer potential link-back partners a choice of several designs, both static and animated, and increase the odds that they'll be willing to display your button.

Put links in context. Links that are included in page content and contain the page's keywords are more valuable than links exiled to a site's "Related Links" page. Content links help search engines rank the importance of a link and put it in the proper context.

Here are two different ways to link to the same site: Kent Mountain Adventure Center or adventure summer camp for kids in Estes Park, CO. The second link describes the camp and contains the camp's important keywords.

Try to identify a particular page where a link to your site would fit right into the page's content and note the exact location when you ask for a link. That shows the webmaster that you actually took the time to look at and evaluate the site.

A good linking strategy will help turn your Web site into an authority on a particular topic. Visitors will flock to you for information and search engine spiders will gobble up your content. You won't have to spend time chasing after good links, they'll come looking for you.
In conclusion, take the time to build your web site link popularity with quality links from related sites that you have personally visited and investigated. Regard each link as a relationship with a business partner and you will prosper. Don't rely entirely on automated reciprocal link generators or mass submission services, and keep in mind the limitations and courtesies to building link popularity!