Website Marketing Strategies – Increasing Your Link Popularity

In this days search engine rankings have become one of the most important issues for a website. Because of that the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN frequently update their algorithms in order to deliver best results to their users. The most important factor in a search engine’s ranking algorithm is link popularity.

Link popularity is defined as the number of links that point to a site. The search engines consider this links as some kind of votes in the sites favor. Some time ago it didn’t matter what kind of links pointed to your site. So every webmaster linked their sites to any other site not considering it’s nature. Link exchange was the best website marketing strategies in those times. But now, the search engines updated their algos and they investigate every “vote”.

Link popularity remains a major factor in the search engine’s way of ranking but what’s more important this days is the quality of the links. When the search engine spider crawls, it investigates all the incoming links to see if they are good “votes” or bad “votes”. When everybody was making reciprocal links only the number was important. But this reciprocal links are not so powerful any more because search engines are looking for links on related sites with related content that are not placed their just for receiving a link back. The spider wants to find out if that link is placed there because of the quality of the site is pointing to.

So increasing your link popularity is still the best website marketing strategy but try to get only good links from related sites. This way you’ll benefit from the direct targeted traffic and you’ll have good search engine positioning too.

There are many ways to get quality links. The best would be acquiring one way links. If the inbound links are one way then the search engine will know from the beginning that the links are not a result of an agreement between two webmasters. You can achieve one way links by writing good articles and distribute them for reprinting over the net, having great content on your site, writing testimonials for products that you used or even purchasing them. Reciprocal links are still good but try to trade your links only with sites with similar topics and trust worthy sites.

In conclusion increasing your link popularity with good legit links will boost your site’s traffic in no time.

Do Reciprocal Links Work To Increase My Page Rank?

Reciprocal links work like this. You will put your link on someone else’s website and they will be able to list their website on yours. It is a trade off. But, there has been a lot of controversy about these links. Do they work to help improve your page rank in search engines? Do they hurt your page rank? Should you bother investing in them? To answer these questions, take a moment to consider both sides of the coin. The bottom line, to most webmasters, is that they are capable of working for you.

Why They May Not Be Good

When reciprocal links first began to be used, it was a trade off between one webmaster and another. If you were in the home decorating business, for example, it would be beneficial to work with and have a link to a company that provides windows. You both would benefit. When the webmasters did this, they found that their websites did in fact rank better. In fact, it worked so well that they went out and sought more and more of them.

There in lies the problem. Instead of working with other website owners to develop a relationship and create a reciprocal link that benefited both parties, many website developers found that they could buy these links instead. Now, they did not have to go to the trouble of luring in those that they would like to have links from but they could just buy them. Okay, this is not so bad right? The problem was that people were buying and using thousands of reciprocal links on their website. This is completely unnatural and it just didn’t work well for them.

But, Why?

The search engines soon became wise to this scheme of getting your website to rank well. They developed programs that would spot this problem and in fact people that used this large amount of reciprocal links, in this fashion, were ranked WORSE! They would spend top dollar to get these links from companies that were all too willing to sell them and would end up well back into the search pages.

So, Now What?

Keeping these things in mind, you need to consider wisely if you should in fact use reciprocal links for the websites that you put up. In most cases, if you take the time to work at getting reciprocal links from qualified webmasters instead of buying large amounts of them, you are more capable of securing a sound method for increasing your page rank. If you decide to purchase hundreds of them and slap them on your website quickly, you will face a worst case scenario of lowering your page rank.

Keep in mind as well that one of the best ways to increase traffic to your web page with links is to use one way links. You can get these by using article directory sites. There may not be a sure fire way to take a brand new site and get it as number one in the search engines, you can gain some movement upwards if you use links properly.

Link Popularity FAQ

Building links doesn’t always have to be so stressful. Many sites tell you that they’ll increase your links by 1000 overnight if you spend $39.99! I’m here to tell you, it’s not the quantity, it’s the quality.

Although quality does help, it’s hard to judge what is quality and what isn’t. The first comes first, reciprocal links aren’t all that great, so don’t spend hours upon hours of sending hopeless spam mails to sites who, if you had good content, would link to you for free.

The best way to gain links quickly is article submission. One article, if well written and of high quality, can generate 10-15 links. Think of the possibilities! Write one article a day for a week and you may end up with 100 links. And that is, 100 non-reciprocal links.

Why are non-reciprocal links so important?
Well, I will tell you. Search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, are now counting reciprocal links for less. There is even speculation of the recent update that Yahoo! is penalizing sites which have links pages.

Even if this were not the case, non-reciprocal links are more important for one reason, visitors. Visitors don’t like to see sites with worthless links to websites they don’t want. Why have a link to a travel website if you are in entertainment (besides the obvious, but you get the point)? Even if you do have a reciprocal link to a site which is your competitor you may lose visitors by giving them a higher link popularity.

Should I not link to anyone then?
No. In fact, you should link to as many authoritative sites as possible (authoritative sites are sites which are ranked 1 or 2 throughout your genre).

Links are very important on every site. Don’t just give them away, choose carefully. Link to authoritative sites with great content you know your visitors will appreciate. Just ask yourself, "If the links are not for the visitors use, what use are they then?"

So, I’ve done the whole article submission thing, what other ways can I gain link popularity?
Directories and great content. Content is king and is becoming more-so with the evolution of Search Engines. When a site owner finds an article useful he or she generally places a link to it, even if it is just a blog, it’s still a link. But whatever you do, don’t do the silly thing and spam blogs, that will only get you banned.

Directories are also a major part. If you can write a great description and have an editor in your field at DMOZ.org, submit it and forget it. Either you will get in or you won’t. If there isn’t an editor, try becoming one. It will only take a few hours of your time, just don’t get too hopeful.

If you can’t get in DMOZ, don’t worry, there are tons of other useful directories out there. Tons of FREE directories. Don’t spend $10-$20 on a directory submission unless you know they are worth it and can generate quality traffic. Google and others are starting to crack down on directories who require a fee in order to get listed.

Link Popularity Means More Traffic

The first place that a potential customer goes to find a product or service on the internet is a search engine. The higher you are listed in a search engine the better the possibility of your site being found. If the potential customers do not find you in their search, chances are that they will not visit your site and as a result you will not have an opportunity at making a sale with that prospect.

What has this all got to do with link popularity? Well, link popularity refers to the ranking assigned to your website by the search engines. It determines the ranking or positioning your page gets when keywords are entered into a search engine by a potential customer when looking for a product or service. The higher the position the more likely a prospect will find and click onto your site.

There are a few things you should be aware of and guard against in your quest for link popularity. These can be summed up in two words: Quantity and Quality.

You will not achieve link popularity just by linking up with a large number of other websites. In fact, it may work against you. There are web sites that are known as “link farms” containing line after line of indiscriminate links. Search engines will discriminate against your website if you are associated with a link farm, so steer clear of them!

The quality of the site you are linking to is also super important. So be sure to check out the site you are linking to before you commit to linking. If you have any reservation about your visitors seeing that you are linking to a site that is indiscriminate and cheap, forget about it. Linking to sites of poor quality will only lessen your link popularity, if not completely destroy it.

Here are some things you need to do to achieve link popularity and improve your rankings on the popular search engines.

The fastest way to get your foot in the door is to get a listing on some popular directories. You can do this manually or with the aid of software. There are several excellent software products on the market and when you consider the cost versus the time, you can decide which course is best for you.

The next step after you have attained directory listings is to locate other quality sites that will increase your link popularity. Try to find sites that are in some way related to yours, so not only will your link popularity increase, but your customer base may also be expanded. You want to avoid your competitors and look for sites that are useful to your site’s visitors. For instance, if you are selling life insurance, someone selling health insurance would be a good link choice. By linking to a related site that will be relevant to your website’s traffic, you are increasing both of your site’s business prospects – and both of your sites’ link popularity.

Remember, your criteria are quality, highly ranked, non-competing websites that have a link or resources page. Go to these sites and objectively assess them. Look at the quality of the product, the graphics, and the ease of use. Then check out the other sites they are linked to, and determine if your own site would fit in with this crowd. Again you can do this manually, or with a software program.

There is a lot of hard work over an extended period of time invloved to get a high ranking with search engines. Other than some software programs to assist you there are no shortcuts to achieve link popularity. So be prepared for a long journey to the top. This is one of those areas where patience, commitment, and persistence pay off. Good Luck!

P.S.: You want to be sure to have an attractive and interesting site or you will never persuade anyone to link up to you.

Search Engine Optimization: Natural Linking Strategies

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be the difference between a small, barely profitable or visible website and a traffic magnet website. There are a lot of ways, both good and bad, to influence the search engines. Some search engines react to certain strategies better than others. Some even have conflicting strategies that they react to. To document all of these things would require a significant number of pages and research that goes beyond the scope of this article.

However, there are a number of things that can be documented that will work for most if not all search engines. And let’s face it; there are really only 3 that make a difference between a successful and an unsuccessful SEO strategy. They are the big three: Google, Yahoo and MSN. These three search engines in any given month are responsible for over 90% of all internet searches.

So, what is this article about? It’s about what you can do as a website owner that will influence the search engines using commonly accepted practices of linking to other websites (outbound) and getting website links (inbound) back to you. There are basically 4 strategies that a website owner usually will employ to increase their website value in the eyes of the search engine.

They are reciprocal linking, one-way linking, multi-site linking and directory linking. A website owner should not think that using just a single strategy is the right answer – sure it will help your SEO but it won’t be the Best answer. The Best answer is to employ all 4 techniques and to do it naturally.

Each of the four linking strategies has specific descriptions that can be summed up as:

1. Reciprocal Linking: Site A links to Site B, Site B links back to Site A

2. One-Way Linking: Site B links to Site A

3. Multi-Site Linking: Site A links to Site B, Site B links to Site C, Site C links to Site D, and Site D links back to Site A. Could be 3..N number of sites involved.

4. Directory Linking: Site Directory A links to Site A

That seems simple enough but it takes time and effort to perform all 4 strategies and most website owners aren’t willing to spend the time or don’t have the time to spend on it. As a website owner, SEO needs to be one of the highest priority tasks that you need to address, just after Order Processing and Fulfillment and Customer Service. Without free traffic from the search engines, other traffic generation strategies that usually require payment must be engaged.

Now doing the 4 strategies above is great, but it gets even harder because you have to do it in a way that doesn’t trigger the search engines to enforce a penalty upon your website. No one except the search engine engineers know all of the exact penalties but we have some good theories for some of them.

The first is the rate at which links are created. There is a certain threshold for creating links that is too fast. It’s possible that the threshold is a sliding scale and is related to the age of the website according to the engine. For example, a young low-traffic website should not normally be getting 1000 links a month whereas an older website that gets a lot of traffic could be OK to get 1000 links a month. As you progress in your linking strategies make sure you keep this in mind, especially if you are thinking about buying links.

The second is that having a link to every site that links to you will likely reduce the value of the links. In other words, if all you ever get is Reciprocal Linking, you will likely move up the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Page’s) but you won’t reach your sites full potential. Having a mixture of all 4 strategies will appear more natural to the engines.

The third is having all inbound links to your site on “linking” pages will make those links less valuable than having a natural link on a contextually relative page for a percentage of the inbound links. The higher you can drive this context percentage, the better your website will rank. These types of links are often some of the most difficult links to generate an exchange for because it requires more time and effort for both website owners.

The fourth is to have links inbound from all different ranking sites. If all you have linking to you is page rank 6 and 7 sites then you are likely to be sending the message that you purchased your links and that is not natural to the engines. Some would argue that purchasing links for driving traffic is just fine and it is. However, you should not expect the search engines to give those inbound links very much weight when calculating your SERP positions. It is significantly more natural for you to have a large number of rank 1 and 2 inbound links and a decreasing number of inbound links as you move up the page rank scale (0 – 10).

The fifth is to have the text of you inbound links varied. It isn’t natural to have every website that links to you to have the same text on the link description. The natural tendency would be to have a certain percent be the sites name, but after that it should be a wide variety of description. Your link text description is a key factor for how your site/page will rank, so make sure that you keep that in mind as you specify your preferred link text description on your website.

Finally, it would be best for a good percentage of your inbound links to appear within the text of a page that appears natural for the reader of that site. And for those links to not all point back to the home page of your website. It’s most natural for a good high quality link to appear in the text of a page and have it point internally within your site.

So, when you begin or continue your SEO activities keep all of these things in mind and don’t be impatient. Impatience could incur penalties or worse. Your website could end up in the “sandbox”. It is rumored and becoming more concrete that Google supposedly uses a sandbox that questionable sites are put in until they have aged to a point that Google no longer feels that they are being manipulated. Many of the search engines use similar protection schemes to eliminate spam sites and manipulation sites to keep their SERP’s from being cluttered.

Link Popularity and Search Engines

Link popularity has become increasingly important among the search engines. Because link popularity goes hand in hand with search engine optimization, it is important for any company with a web presence to build a link development strategy.

Many online marketing specialists believe that link popularity is simply obtaining as many links as possible. However, the quality of the link holds more “weight” than the quantity of links. You will get better results in the search engines if you have link popularity from sites that have considerable traffic.

To develop popularity for your web site, you should submit your site to the most visited directories. Yahoo (of course), LookSmart, About.com, and Open Directory are examples of major directories. Also, to further develop link popularity, you should consider sites/directories that are very industry specific, such as healthatoz.com for a health-related site.

Even more important, it can help your search engine ranking if your site is reviewed by a directory that is associated with a search engine. To be accepted into a major directory, we recommend that your site have content that can show credibility in your field. A tips page, links page, or a “how-to” page can showcase your credibility on your product or service.

For example, we can almost always tell when a new client site is added to Yahoo by looking at an Google ranking. Oftentimes, we will obtain a top 30 ranking for a client, then suddenly the site will move to a #1 position. Sure enough, when we go into Yahoo, we will see that the client site has been added. That’s one of the reasons that we think a listing in Yahoo is essential.

Obtaining links from other web sites is not enough to obtain long-term results on both the search engines and directories. People have to actually click on those links to your web site and browse your web site. AND they need to return to your web site when they see the quality content, products, and/or services that you offer, i.e. the usability of your web site. That is the definition of “popularity” according to the major search engines and directories. Other terms for it are “click” popularity or “click-through” popularity.

Therefore, both link popularity and click-through popularity are essential for obtaining optimal search engine placement.

Remember, a search engine position is not permanent since the search engine companies change their algorithms all of the time. Being listed in directories and other sites can significantly drive traffic and sales, particularly if your site is listed in specialized directories (health, financial, and travel, for example).

To check your link popularity in some search engines:

For AltaVista, in the search query field, type in:

link:domainname.com

For Inktomi’s services, in the search query field, type in:

Linkdomain:domainname.com

For FAST Search, in the search query field, type in your domain name:

link.all:www.domainname.com

For Google, in the search query field, type in your domain name:

link:www.domainname.com

Link development serves multiple purposes. It can drive traffic and sales to your web site and it can also help your search engine rankings.

Increase Link Popularity and Good Rankings in Search Engine

You will have to collect a large number of high quality links from other Web sites if you want to improve search engine ranking of your web site. And they are known as inbound links. At the same time you can improve the link popularity by getting links from other high ranking sites. Google, the popular search engine provides much link popularity of website. If your site is linked to other sites you can get listed in Google without submitting your site to Google. If you can find more sites which are high in ranking, you can increase the search engine ranking. There are many ways to increase your popularity. Few of them are explained below:

Submit your site to the search engine directories: By submitting your site to the human edited directories like dmoz.org and Yahoo your site will get an increase in the link and thus it will increase your site’s search engine ranking. It may take some delay. You can even get listed much faster by linking to niche
Special directories. You can get these directories from the major search engines with the primary keywords. One of the good directories from India to submit link and to increase link popularity and search engine rankings is
Online Indian Directory . It’s free to Submit. Any one can submit links if they find any website useful to others too.

Content should be qualified: If your site provides what the visitors seek, they will come back to your site again. This will naturally provide high ranking and popularity of your site. The content should be proper focused and meaningful.

Proper keywords: Keywords play an important role in search engine optimization and it increases your ranking.

Publish Articles: When the visitors find immediately what they search for they are so happy and well impressed. This satisfaction is achieved by publishing articles. If you attach a link with your article, you will automatically get a link in return. This method also leads to high popularity.

Link Request: Links paves a smooth way for high search engine ranking. Link a site to others and also attach a brief description about your link. It will increase lot of clicks in your site. Reciprocal linking request is much better. It will definitely increase your link popularity. Both parties are benefited from it.

Provide witnessing notes: If you write a positive review and the benefits of some other site’s product or web site they will attach their link back to your site. And it is more beneficial.

Conclusion

The above written strategies are more beneficial and effective to rise up your web traffic and to improve search engine ranking and link popularity.