How To Improve Your Link Popularity
This article will show
you the importance of link popularity and how to improve your
webpage's link popularity utilizing a few different techniques.
Link popularity simply is the number of links that point to
a webpage and is a crucial factor used by almost all of the
search engines to rank websites.
Link Popularity Importance
With the every increasingly popularity of Google, web site owners
marketing efforts have had to change to accommodate what Google is
looking for in a quality site. One way to prove that you have a
quality site has been with link popularity. Good quality
incoming links
coupled with good quality page content will bring highly targeted
traffic, and a lot of it. Just keep in mind that quality is key.
The saying less is more really applies here. Just because your
website has five hundred incoming links doesn't mean that they are all
relevant. Ensure that the links you are getting are relevant to
the content that your page is offering. This is extremely
important.
Tips to Improving link Popularity
1. Directory Listings:
Ensure your site is listed in the Open Directory Project (ODP)
and also in Yahoo's Business Express ($299 yearly) and
LookSmart Express Submit or Basic Submit. Directory listings
boost popularity because they rely on human editors, known to
only select relevant websites. You may also try
searching for other directories to submit to. Do
a search for "list
of directories".
2. Cross Linking:
Or you may hear it referred to as internal linking. Make
sure you cross link your important related pages. This
technique tells the search
engines that these are the more important pages within your
website therefore they will increase in ranking. Cross
linking your pages also helps the search engines find and index
your most important pages quicker, especially if you have hundreds
of pages and some of them are four and five levels deep.
Internal linking is a great way to increase the amount of keywords
in your visual text links. You will notice that we have linked
to our list of directories and search engines. This is an example
of internal linking. We've essentially told the search engines
that these are pretty important pages of this site.
3. Publish articles: Write up some informative articles your
audience is interested in, then submit these articles to online
publications in your industry. Provide a brief bio which includes
your web sites URL and make a condition that the article must be
published intact with your bio. Over a short period of time you
should gather some quality links.
4. Request Links:
Open up an Excel spreadsheet and list all of the possible linking
partners that you have gathered.
Now that you have a list of possible link partners put a link on your
site to their site and then email each site owner telling them that
you've linked to them and respectfully ask them to link back to you in return. You would be surprised by the amount of response
you get. Make it as easy as possible for the other site to link to
you. I've found a that actually providing a form so the site owner
can just copy and paste your link code into their site makes linking to
you extremely easy. This can save a lot email-tag for the both of
you.
Two Important Factors
There are essentially two important factors in increasing your
webpage's link popularity. Studies have shown that the quality of
the link is just as important as the number of incoming links to your
site.
1. Quality of link - Link popularity will skyrocket
when popular sites link you such as Yahoo and the Open Directory Project
(ODP). These sites are considered authoritive sites and receive a
high amount of traffic. Also, you should concentrate on getting
links from major search engines such as Google, MSN, and also sites that
relate to your sites theme/content. Most search engines will see
your website in a much higher light if you have a incoming link from a
major search engine, thus greatly increasing free search engine traffic.
Try to find websites that link to your competition. This does a
couple of things for you. First and utmost you know that links to
your competition usually will be relevant and on topic. Also, this will
greatly reduce the amount of time you have to invest in finding incoming
links.
Finding sites that link to your competition is actually quit easy.
Try typing "link" and then the competitors domain name like this:
"link:www.competitors-domain.com."
Another technique in finding quality links is by finding sites that offer
site submissions. Go to Google and type in:
"add url" "your keyword phrase"
Also try replacing, "add url" with any other these search phrases::
add site, add link, add a url, add a site, add a link, submit url, submit site, submit link, submit a url, submit a site, submit a link.
2. Keywords in Link
Another very important factor is the keyword being used to link to your site.
When asking a site owner to link to your site make sure that you ask
them to link with the keyword that you are optimizing that page for. Keywords are very important in determining the relevancy of your webpage so
ensure that they are sprinkled throughout them as well.
Nearly 25 percent of the #1 web pages on Google result pages used the queried keyword in <A> link texts.
For example, if the keyword is "computers", the following <A> link text contains the keyword once:
<A HREF="http://www.yourdomain.com/yourpage.com">Computers</A>
Nearly one out of four web pages is a very high number so it looks like Google ranks web pages higher if they contain keywords in their <A> link texts.
BONUS:
Search engines especially Google pay
very close attention to the title of a webpage. Therefore it is
imperative that you name the pages title using the same keyword phrase that you are
optimizing it for. Example: Let's say you have a page
dedicated to "Norman Rockwell". You would not only want
visual keyword links within the page, but also as the title of the page.
Conclusion
Link popularity should be a vital part of your search engine
optimization strategies. Ensure that you follow your link
popularity plan and never waver from it. You will be thanking
yourself when you do and so will the search engines!
If you would like to automate your link building efforts, I recommend
using a link management tool such as Arelis.
It will save much time, I know it has for me :)
Link Building Tools: Link
Popularity Checker | Find
Keywords for your Links | Link
Extractor & make sure to visit the Link
Building Forum where you can listen to some amazingly smart
people about how to properly, create powerful inbound links
and internal links so that your website and its pages show up
high in search engine rankings for the "right"
keywords..
