Link Popularity is a greatly misunderstood subject among webmasters and online business owners. The major search engines have developed complicated algorithms that rank web pages for relevancy and quality. In determining relevancy, the search engines tend to measure on page factors such as relevant content. For determining quality, the search engines have moved towards inbound links and their quality as a measure of a website’s importance. The rise of link popularity, as a measure of the links pointing to a website, is founded on the belief that great sites will naturally attract many links and content poor sites will have difficulty attracting any links. While Google is the front runner in giving importance to link popularity, other major search engines such as Yahoo, MSN and AltaVista have also given importance to link popularity, making it a critical component of your search engine strategy.
1. High Page Rank – While Page Rank has been somewhat discredited among the elite of the search engine optimizers, the fact remains that Page Rank is by far one of the most viable methods of determining the importance of a web page. Page Rank remains an important, but not a defining element towards establishing link popularity.
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2. Permanent Links – Google puts a small restriction or penalty on new websites. This penalty, in part monitors the “age” of the inbound links of a website. This draws on the importance of getting permanent links to increase your link popularity. It will work on eliminating your Sandbox penalties while maintaining the reputation you have built.
3. Site Quality – The quality of a website, as determined by the search engines, is a major factor, along with Page Rank, in establishing the importance of a link.
4. Reciprocal Linking – This is definitely the fastest way to get a ton of links pointing to your website. As long as your link directory is broken down into themed categories, you should most definitely trade links with the other website. You should always trade links with another website no matter if they:
• Have a PR0 page. If you trade links with them, chances are, they’re also actively building links, so this PR0 page will soon be a PR3, PR4, and even more.
• Over 30 links on a links page. Any link will help your rankings, as long as the website you’re exchanging with is not banned. (Gray Google Page Rank).
5. Natural Link Building – The building blocks of site to site linking, as search engines understand and define it. Search engines justify using link popularity as a ranking tool with the idea that good quality sites will naturally attract links.