Link Popularity a link to success

Link popularity basically means the number of web sites linking to your web site. But with link popularity quality can be more important than quantity.

Why do search engines focus on link popularity?
In search engines you have two types of indexes
1. Directory � Where sites have been submitted and approved and assigned by editors.
2. Bots- Software bots specifically designed to crawl sites and collect site data.
Link popularity utilizes the power of bots in being able to go through and index billions of sites. While it also uses human intelligence by giving a voting power to what humans feel is a site that has importance by analyzing a link.

Most Major Search Engines use link popularity in their ranking formulas including: AltaVista, Inktomi, MSN Search, HotBot. For Google, it's even the most important factor in ranking sites.

Link popularity works when a web site links to your site, if you have a quality site that is offering good content and resources. If many web sites are linking to your site the search engines give you higher rankings because they realize that your site has quality content and will help the end user.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin said in an interview: "...a page that is pointed to by many other sites is important. In other words, external approval raises a page's ranking."

More than search engines
    Link popularity is you link to success if you want to be able to get clicks from other sites in related industries that are not your direct competitors. You will be amazed how fast a few click from several hundred or thousand sources a month really adds up. It is important to think outside the box and just trying to get higher rankings which should come with a well designed optimized site with good ranking sites linking to yours.


External Links vs Internal Links

    External links are links coming from other web sites. External links are generally going to be worth more, since they are coming from an outside source.

    Internal links are the links that are from your web site linking back to your web site e.g. Site Menu�s, Site maps, etc. Your site should be well built to internally link to the majority of your web pages on every page. For bigger sites that have more than 20 pages you should have every page link back to your main pages you would like to focus on, especially the home page.

Quantity vs Quality
    Does this mean all links are created equally?
    No. Link popularity has to do with link quality meaning that a site that links to higher quality sites and has a lot of quality incoming links will have a higher vote when it links to sites. It is like the Electoral College compared to the popular vote in U.S. President elections. The popular vote everyone vote is counted. In the electoral vote if you get a vote from California that is worth as much as 10 small states. So when you look at getting links do not focus all on quantity. 

        However I have seen many sites just focus on the top quality or high ranking links, this can be a bad strategy as well, meaning it is important to get a spectrum of different links for different sites. This gives a feel for a more natural approach, remember search engines look at what look artificial; they tend to apply heavy penalties when they feel a site is more focused on higher rankings than focusing on the end user.

Link Building Tips
A. The Good

1. Switch up your link exchange write up, Search engines have penalized a site that has the same     basic target text in links. For example if I sold Jump Ropes, in my link exchanges I would want to  provide several varieties of my link exchange write ups-
                Jump Rope to build stamina
                Lose weight by jump roping
                Jump rope power workouts
                Jump rope to be faster and stronger                                                                                     I would offer many varieties of your write up with adding additional ones every few months, within each write up focus on your main keywords you want optimized.  
2. Offer unique content. Provide a reason for other sites to link to you, doing link exchanges can be  very time consuming and difficult. The bonus comes when other sites link to you when they like what you have to offer. 
   
3. Utilize internal links wisely to help give more     votes. It is also essential to use internal links so    the search engines can find all of your pages.      
   

 

B. The Bad

1. Avoid FFA links like the plague. Major search engines have seen these ones years ago and will  most likely ban you.
2. Be careful when joining web rings or being careful on which links your site links to. You have no control of what web sites link to you, however if you link to a site that would be considered spam you may be guilty by association.
3. It�s all in the family, meaning that you are cross-linking between several of your own sites. Use     this with caution; some search engines may penalize you for this, especially if it appears you are  artificially trying to higher your rankings.