Friday, December 12, 2008

Link Popularity is the Real Trump Card for Your Site’s Search Engine Ranking

All the major search engines i.e. Google, Yahoo and MSN used to rank a website based on the quantity and the quality of inbound links it has got while showing up in their search result pages. Therefore “search engine ranking” and “link popularity” has become quite complementary these days. One needs to manage his/her site’s incoming links properly and should try to improve their numbers using advance and ethical link building techniques in order to get higher search engine ranking.

What is Link Popularity?

Link popularity is a measure of the number of links pointing to a website from other websites. Strong link popularity positively influences your site’s ranking in organic search results. Links from theme related and quality sites are considered more important by search engines than links from less relevant or unpopular sites.

Importance of Link Popularity:-

Only an increased number of inbound links can’t bring your site higher search engine ranking unless and until they are from quality sites. Quality of links is crucial in assigning websites better link popularity scores and sets apart bad links which are acquired using spammy techniques which some search engine algorithms don’t consider while deciding upon the link popularity for a website.

Role of Link Popularity in Search Engine Ranking: -

Each inbound link is considered a vote for the linked site. Therefore search engines not only consider sites with higher number of inbound links as quality sites but also assign them good link popularity score. Though your link popularity alone can’t make it to high search engine ranking but it will help your site in some form or other to rank high in major search engines.
Major search engine algorithms include link popularity as an important criterion for search engine ranking. Even Google uses link popularity almost exclusively to rank sites. Recently Google has entered into a partnership with Yahoo to provide secondary results for Yahoo's Web directory, so a high ranking for your site in Google may help it indirectly in coming at a higher rank in Yahoo too.
Managing and Improving Link Popularity: -
Link popularity development and management is an ongoing process. Even a quality site with valuable content has to wait for a considerable period of time to have a better link popularity and high search engine ranking.
Fortunately, there are a number of ways to set up your own link campaign and improve link popularity, which will give your site a boost in the search engine rankings. Some of them are as follows:
• Directory Listings: You should make it sure that your site is listed in the Open Directory Project (ODP) and also in Yahoo’s Business Express ($299 yearly) and Look Smart Express Submit or Basic Submit. As directories rely on human editors, they have tremendous potential to boost your link popularity. You may also try searching for other directories on web and try submitting in them too.
• Cross Linking: It is also known as internal linking where you have to cross link all your important web pages properly and tell the search engines that these are the more important pages within your website so that they will rank high in search engines. When you have hundreds of pages and some of them are four or five levels deep, cross linking your pages helps the search engines to find and index your most important pages quicker. Internal linking is a great way to increase the amount of keywords in your visual text links.
• Request Links: When looking for your prospective link partners, start by visiting a search engine and typing in your most relevant keywords. It would be better for you to target non-competing and complimentary sites rather than your competitors. Personally approach the ones that might be receptive to your link request mail. Convince them to link to your site and be sure to suggest where to place your link. A good link request practice is to link to those sites before approaching them with a link request, which might help you get a link back sooner.
• Publish articles: Writing up some informative articles your audience is interested in, and submitting them to online publications may help your site get some quality links over a short period of tome. These articles must be published with your bio which includes your web site URL and a brief description about it.

Link popularity constitutes a major part of your search engine optimization strategies. It can improve your site’s search engine visibility as well as ranking effectively. What is needed is that you should act upon a proper link popularity strategy and get on modifying it further.

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