Link Popularity is one of the most important factors
affecting your Search Engine rankings. When your site is
popular with other web-sites, the Search Engines love you,
but if you are the new kid on the block, they ignore you -
totally. It's great to be popular and improving your Link
Popularity will also get you higher rankings on the search
engines.
Why is Link Popularity important for Higher Rankings?
Search Engines are just software programs that try to
analyze the utility and validity of your content with
regard to certain keywords. They also try to understand the
importance or ranking of your site against all competing
sites in their indices.
Just How do Search Engines Learn About the Utility and the
Validity of Your Content?
Search Engines just love sites that users love to visit.
They love it even more if users spend more time at the site
before they browse away. Now how do they know which sites
humans love? Obviously with the billions of web pages on
the world wide web, the Search Engines cannot manually go
to each site and check their content. They let other humans
do that work for them. Then they watch as others link to
your site. They watch your Link Popularity.
Link popularity simply means how popular are you on the
World Wide Web. And your popularity is determined by the
number of people linking to your website. The greater the
number of external links pointing to your web-site, the
greater your ranking. Simple, isn't it?
Here is how to find YOUR link popularity: Go to Google.com
and type in "link: followed by your URL". This returns all
the sites that link to you in the Google index. eg.
link:http://www.yourdomain.com.
How Do You Get a Lot of People to Link to You?
Getting people to link to you is easy if you establish your
presence. Show that you are a master of your domain. Even
if you deal in manure, and there are people out there
wanting to know more about it, you have an audience. And if
you establish your presence well enough, the links will
automatically follow.
Here are a few ways you can increase your inbound links.
1) Articles: Almost anybody can write articles. This is
the easiest way to get started on your way to Search Engine
manna. It's just a question of putting down your thoughts
in a coherent manner. As long as the information you are
providing is useful and valid, your articles will be sought
after by publishers out there. There are also hundreds of
article directories on the net.
To find article directories, Google 'Article Directories'.
You get nearly 53 million hits. There are also some
awesome free tools available for this.
For those with a morbid fear of writing, you can find
'Ghostwriters' as well as 'Virtual Assistants' on the
Internet. Search on Google for those terms and you will
find many a link to sites that provide you suitable
services. You may also use sites like Elance.com and
RentACoder.com for people who will write articles for you.
2) Blogs: Blogs are not as easy to do as Articles are. But
they are a very useful tool, nevertheless. When you have a
blog, you have an audience. It's like a fan base. They have
certain expectations of you. They want you to churn out hit
singles or albums. But they want you to give them more.
Even though they started out as mere diaries or daily
jottings of a few people, currently they are excellent link
building, content management and search engine optimization
tools.
In fact almost any industry can have a blog portal. As always
run a search and you will find something in your industry.
Or you can go to blogger.com
or wordpress.com to start your
own blog free of charge.
3) Free Products: The easiest way to do this is to write a
tool and offer it for download. Or maybe even provide a
service for free. The greatest example of building a
business with free service that comes to mind is
hotmail.com. Once your service becomes a must-have, it's
only a matter of time before you can start making money
from it. Also you can have people point to your site to
give their customers access to your tool.
4) Trackbacks: This is the easiest way to get your links
out there. What you do is go to other blogs (Authority
Sites) in your industry and become a regular contributor.
Or comment on the blogs. Along with your signature, most
people offer a link to your web-site. And the more links
you have pointing back to you, the more popular you get.
Also, when you become a major contributor/commentor, people
start valuing your opinion more.
5) Syndication: You can offer your articles to other
sites for publishing for free or for payment. Your article
links back to your site.
6) Reciprocal links: You offer a link to another peer site,
in return for them linking back to you. This is a good way
to get your target industry users to come to your site.
Also you introduce your users to other sites that they may
be interested in visiting. They will be thankful to you for
pointing them in the right direction. And they come to
trust you more.
7) Partner links: Your local Chamber of commerce,
Suppliers, Resellers, Affiliates, Sites selling
complementary products etc.
Study your competition. Google your product and study
the linking strategy of top ranking sites. There are tools
that help you do this. Webposition.com has a good tool but
I prefer EliteSEOTool.com as it has some additional
features that I love. These tools help you conduct an
ongoing study of your competition and their rankings
thereby helping you beat them consistently.
Of course, no amount of link popularity will help you if
don't have the content to keep visitors at your site. So
start with good content.
A note of caution! Make sure that you are being linked to
by Authority sites with a Good PageRank. Also the linking
sites should somehow be relevant to your industry. If not,
it only serves to confuse the Search Engines and your
rankings will suffer.
About The Author
Get top rankings on any Search Engine! Use the 7 simple SEO steps outlined here to achieve greater
Link Popularity and get your website ranked higher in no time at all. For tools and other Search Engine
Optimization ideas to create greater profits, visit http://www.nobleriver.com
and click Articles.
