What is Link Popularity?

Link popularity is a factor that many search engines use when ranking web pages within their indexes. Simply put, most search engines give a ranking boost to sites that have incoming links from quality, related sites. This method of establishing importance, pioneered by the increasingly popular Google, is now used in some form by 19 of the top 20 search engines. While it is still possible to achieve high rankings for non-competitive terms without a great deal of link popularity, it is unlikely your site will rank well for very popular terms without it.

Directories

It is important to note that the sheer number of incoming links is not as important as the quality of the sites that are doing the linking. The fastest way to get some quality incoming links is to get listings in the popular directories, such as Yahoo and the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org). For business sites, Yahoo costs $299 per year (it is free for non-commercial sites, although it takes a while to get listed). The Open Directory is free for all sites that meet certain quality standards, but it sometimes takes some respectful but diligent follow-up inquiries to make sure your site gets listed. When listing your sites, try to get them in the highest-level category that is applicable to your site.

For instance, if your company in Smallville Ohio ships wind chimes to consumers nationwide, make sure you submit to the national "Wind Chime Dealers" category, not the "Retailers in Smallville, Ohio" category.

Finding Partners

Once you have submitted your directory listings, you should look for other sites that might link to yours. Ideally, the businesses that run these sites will be related to yours but will not be direct competitors. For example, if you had a site that sold supplies for swimming pools, it could be useful to your visitors if your site had a link to a swimming pool installer, and useful to his visitors to have a link back to your site. Since your offerings complement each other, neither of you are likely to lose business by exchanging links.

You also have to find sites that show a propensity to link to others. Google is an excellent engine to use when looking for potential linking partners. Typing in keywords that you think your customers might use to find you, look for quality, well-ranked, non-competing sites that have "links" or "resources" pages, and objectively look to see if your site would fit with the other sites listed. If you think it is a possibility, make a note of the site, including the webmaster's address and something specific about the site you particularly liked. It is also very useful to look at each of the sites on these "links" pages, as many of them might also be potential link partners. When you have found a good number of sites, add a link to each of them from a "links" page on your own site. It is important to do this before contacting the site owners, as they are much more likely to reciprocate if they see that you have already taken the trouble to link to them.

Making the contact

Once you have added a link to each of the sites you have identified, it is time to contact the site owners. Usually this is done by email. Due to the volume of spam most webmasters receive, it is very important to let them know that you have actually visited their site in the first few sentences. Compliment them on the site and specifically mention the attribute you particularly enjoyed (as previously noted). You should then let them know that you have already provided a link to them, and give them the URL of your links page so they can see this link for themselves. Only then do you mention that you would appreciate it if they would reciprocate.

Monitoring

Once all of your initial emails have gone out, check back to the sites you have targeted periodically to see if they have added your link. If they haven't added it within a month, one follow-up email is normally acceptable. If you don't hear back from them for a month after that, it may be time to remove their link from your links page, unless you feel that the resource they provide is of critical value to your visitors. Check your rank ings every month or so to see how they improve, and, if necessary, start the process again.

The List Of Don'ts

Don't exchange links with sites that you would not want your visitors to see. This type of link can make your site look indiscriminate while defeating the entire purpose of link popularity. Also, do not ever exchange links with sites that contain nothing but a huge collection of links (AKA "link farms"). Search engines have been known to aggressively penalize sites that are associated with such sites. In addition, do not harass people who do not answer your emails. Remember that you are contacting someone, out of the blue, who probably has too much to do already. If they haven't responded within a month of your second email, don't expect a link. Finally, do not expect overnight results. Link building takes a great deal of time and labor, and there is no real shortcut- a primary reason why search engines place importance on it. If your site is terrible, you aren't going to convince many others to link to you, no matter how sweetly you ask.

Conclusion

A properly executed link building campaign will help boost your ranking with many search engines, but this is only part of the benefit. The quality sites that have agreed to link to you will also send you highly relevant traffic. Also, your brand and name will become better known within your industry as a result of the link requests that you make. Finally, your additions to Yahoo and the Open Directory will send you a great deal of additional quality traffic. Link building is a laborious process, but if done properly it is most definitely worth the effort.

Pumping Up Traffic With Linking Strategy

A recent user survey conducted by the Graphics, Visualization & Usability (GVU) Center, http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/, found that, for the FIRST TIME, "Most users find new web pages through other Web pages (88%)" and " ... search engines are down to 82%".

Linking from other web sites is now king of exposure!

Linking to and from other web sites is the best way to have people find your web site. And it is not as difficult as you might first think.

First of all, it is important to be linked to sites with like interests. If your web site is all about cars you do not want to bother linking to a site that is all about cats. Visit your favorite web search engine and do a keyword search of sites that are most similar to yours. Take the time to actually go to each of the top 20 or 30 web sites returned from your keyword search and have a look at your future promoters. If their content is similar to yours, use their email contact to send the owner/web master a short note.

In your note, you explain that you found them by keyword search via "NAME_THAT search engine". Tell them what you like about their site so that they really know you have visited and you are not some wayward spammer.

Then ask if they would trade links.

You link them if they will link you. This exposure is a WIN/WIN proposition. It does not cost you anything to link to such a web site except a few minutes to enter in a bit of HTML code. You can even create a web page that is strictly for such reciprocal link trades. Then make certain not to clutter the page with too many links. You will be fortunate if you can link to 40 or 50 hot prospective web sites that will draw new visitors to your web site.

Track the progress of these link trades using one of the free tracking services so you will know which ones are indeed providing you with new exposure.

Using the free info these free Tracking Services provide, you can then easily determine which sites are actually providing you with those new visitors. Keep those that bring you exposure and weed out the ones that are just taking up valuable cyber-space. Once you determine the active reciprocal links visit AltaVista at: http://www.altavista.com/ and enter the URL of those web sites to see which other sites are linking to them also. Now you have found another source of exposure by visiting these new sites and repeating the process all over again to establish even more and better reciprocal link partners.

Soon, all our your work will pay off with a steady pumping flow of new daily traffic to your web site.

A Guide to Better Link Popularity

Over the past year or two, one thing has become extremely clear ... the need for link popularity. Every major engine weighs the link popularity of sites heavily when ranking sites. At least one major engine even claims they won't index sites that don't have at least one link pointing to them from another site. Unfortunately, building link popularity can be one of the most challenging aspects of search engine promotion. It's tedious, boring, extremely time consuming, and ABSOLUTELY essential. That being said, let's go over some things you should and shouldn't do when beginning your link popularity campaign. We'll start first with the "shouldn't" list so we can get those out of the way and focus on what will actually work.

• Don't bother with FFA (Free For All) pages. They worked at one time but now most engines have learned to filter out FFA pages, and even if they don't your link will most probably rotate off the results page in a matter of minutes, but you can guarantee that your email address will remain in their database for YEARS.
• Don't join link farms. These were a good idea once as well, but have come under heavy fire by the engines over the past year.
• Don't use hidden links with the goal of building your link popularity. I'm of the opinion that one or two throughout a site is no big deal, but don't go overboard with them.
• Don't use free classifieds to get your URL out there. You are just asking to receive mass amounts of junk mail.

Ok...now that we know some of the things NOT to do, let's get down to some things that you can do to build your link popularity.

• The first thing you should do is to get your site listed in the "Big 3" directories. Those are Yahoo, LookSmart, and the ODP. Yes, Yahoo and LookSmart are expensive (even more so since their recent price increases), but one link from each of them can go a long way in boosting your link popularity.
• Next you should concentrate on finding sites that are of a similar nature to yours and approach them about linking to you. Stay away from off-topic sites. Links from sites of the same theme as yours help to reinforce your theme and further help in boosting your search engine rankings. Be creative in your thinking. Attempt to develop a list of all the different types of sites that relate to yours. Once you have this list you can then begin to search for those specific types of sites.
• Create a link page listing all of the sites that you wish to link to you. By linking to the sites you are going to be contacting first, they will be more likely to link back to you when you contact them.
• Search for smaller vertical directories to submit your site to. There are thousands of these directories out there. A good place to start is at: http://www.searchengineguide.com/searchengines.html
• One often overlooked trick is to find similar sites that use guest-books and forums. If you can find these you will often be able to post a message and include your URL. Be careful with this. Some forums don't allow the posting of URL's so check out their rules of etiquette first.
• Testimonials of products can also be a good way to get your URL out. Consider writing a testimonial of a product you've used. Include your name and URL at the bottom. Email the testimonial to the site owner. Site owner's are ALWAYS looking for testimonials as it increases buyer confidence and most likely they will be happy to post your testimonial.
• Writing articles on your topic can also be a great way to get your URL out. Write an article and include your URL in the bio at the end of the article. Once written submit it to related areas around the web such as E-zines etc. Most of these publications also keep web-based archive of articles that the search engines will eventually spider.
• One product I have personally used is a program called Zeus. This program can dramatically reduce the time involved in finding sites similar to yours. There is a bit of a learning curve to it, but once you understand it and have it up and running, it is a definite time saver. The program is designed to automate the entire task of finding sites, contacting them, and building a link system for those sites, but many people use it just to help them locate the sites so they can personally contact them. For more information on Zeus, visit the following URL: http://www.se-secrets.com/zeus
• If you don't think you have the time to devote to this consider hiring a professional to do the work for you. I have personally worked with a company called LinkageXpress and had great results. They have different price plans depending on the number of links you want. For more information on them visit the following URL: http://www.se-secrets.com/linkage
• Finally, don't forget to link from your site to other related and important sites. This is also taken into account by the engines.

Yes, it can be a bit of a task, but it is an absolute necessity in today's search engine era. Stick to the above guideline and with a little work, effort, and time, you should be sitting pretty. Good Luck and Happy Linking! We Will Help You
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