By building link popularity, you launch a campaign to get one way inbound links from other websites. Building link popularity makes other websites post links to your site. They do so if you convince them with great content that’s worth introducing at their sites.

The result will be higher page rank, traffic and revenue to your website and online business. Incoming links play a fundamental role in the popularity of your website among search engines – link popularity.

Inbound Links and Website Credibility

You should have heard all Internet marketers saying “content is king”! How does this relate to our topic? Well, the answer is very simple: By building link popularity. In other words, it occurs when you have a content that is comprehensive, informative, useful, interesting and unique. Help other other websites find you and post links to your site.

This means that other websites regard the information, product or service you sell as valuable. Then, you receive inbound links from them. Every single quality one way link from a website to you is a credit you receive for your content. So, start building link popularity before it gets late.

The most successful method of inbound links come from:

* Pages with relevant theme and topic,

* Pages with higher Google page rank,

* Content pages, not link pages,

* Well-known directories like DMOZ and Yahoo,

* Online encyclopedias,

* University websites, and

* Creditable websites from your niche or category.

Inbound Links in the Eyes of Search Engines

Search engines give you lots of credit for inbound links. Building link popularity helps your website be found more often and more easily. Some of them help your webpage get higher ranking too.

Google relies a lot on your inbound links and gives you higher ranking for the quality links your web pages receive. For Google, link popularity, quality inbound links your site gets from other websites, is more important than on-site optimization like meta data, tags, headings, etc.

Although the number of links you get plays a substantial role here, the quality of inbound links does more good to your website in building link popularity.

Another advantage of building link popularity is to have more indexations in various search engines. In other words, when there are more pages outside your site linking to you, your website becomes more visible for search engines and consequently for your visitors.

What’s a Quality Inbound Link?

There are several essential factors that should exist in the link-sending pages so that search engines consider your inbound links quality ones. Here are some:

1. The page that sends a link to you should have content relevant to your page receiving it.

2. It will be even a lot better if the link-sending page has got the same keywords as your link-receiving page.

3. It’s preferred to get links from a page the title of which contains the same keyword as your link-receiving page.

4. It’s recommended to receive text links from pages the rank of which are equal to your link-receiving page or even higher. Generally, it’s better, at least, to have links from +2PR web pages within a website with good future.

5. The link-sending page shouldn’t have taken illegitimate measures to obtain high page rank from search engines.

6. It’s better to get inbound links from pages in which there aren’t more than 30 outbound links. Pages with +100 outgoing links are considered “link farms” by search engines. They don’t get any credits from search engines. On the contrary, they get banned for what they’re doing.

7. If the link-sending page uses a banner to post a link to your website, it should have your keyword within the alt tag of the banner.

Note: Building link popularity isn’t an easy work to do. It also takes a remarkable amount of your time, but when you see the results, you’ll agree with other SEO experts that it’s been worth struggling for inbound links. It pays off the hassle.

Rahman Mehraby is mainly focused on Website Assessment as an initial step before taking any SEO Packages. He writes articles to help webmasters gain higher organic search engine placement. Visit his website at: http://www.site-booster.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rahman_Mehraby

Link building is a technique that most webmasters find hard to execute. Years ago it was simple enough, choose your key word for your anchor text and use it for all incoming links. Now, that just doesn’t have the importance it once did and most sites are trying to rank well for more than just one keyword.

First, what is an anchor text? Quite simply it is the text used in your incoming links. So if someone linked to your site using “Big Widgets”, Big Widgets is the anchor text. Now the keywords you use as anchor text contributes to the importance of the page it links too and the search engines will give that page a small boost in the rankings when someone searches for that term. Hopefully, you can see the extreme importance to picking the right anchor text. This is meant to work in conjunction with all the other optimization you do for your site and is an important cog in the wheel of your SEO strategy but not the whole wheel itself.

Here are a few do’s and don’ts on link building especially if you are new to link building and hopefully a few reminders for those that have been doing it a while.

- Do link with sites that may be of interest to your visitors. Often referred to as relevant links, these links are deemed more worthwhile to have than just any link. For example if your site is about cars, a link from a site that sells real estate will do you no good compared to a link from a site that sells car parts.

- Do link with sites that have a clearly labeled link page from their main page. Hidden or hard to find link pages do not help you build traffic. Of course getting a link directly on the home page would be best but if you can not, at least make sure there is a chance someone may find it.

- Do stay organized. Use a spreadsheet, notebook or link exchange software to help you keep track of the link exchanges you have requested and the contact details of the webmasters. This will help you save time by not trying to contact someone who just denied you a link and help you do follow up with those that need to be.

- Don’t confuse quantity with quality. Trust me; the search engine will never confuse them. Good, relevant quality links will win over time. Don’t believe me, check out a popular search term and see how many back links the sites in the top position have. You may be surprised to find that must have less than 500.

- Don’t assume everybody will link with you. Sometimes it may be hard to understand but some sites will not be interested no matter how good the offer to trade links with you. Don’t get discouraged, move to the next site and then the next until you find a site that will, then do it again.

- Don’t use link farms. Link farms are pages we have all seen that have little or no real content and are just covered with link after link. You are unlikely to get extra traffic from them and it may cost you in terms of a search engine penalty.

Link building is imperative to having a good search engine ranking and a good link building strategy is one that is straight forward and never ends. Don’t try short cuts and be very particular whom you link too. It could mean lots of money and ranking if you build links the right way.

Steve Vaughan has been a webmaster since 2002 and has several sites ranking high in search engines. Check his latest SEO blog at Search Engine Optimization

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steve_Vaughan

Here is a list of seven tactics that you can employ to improve you search engine rankings. By way of example, a business that sells red Swingline staplers will be used for this article.

Find the right key words The most important factor in getting quality web traffic is to optimise your web pages for the correct key words. Getting the most sales is often a balance between search volume for key words and level of competition. Interestingly, the search term office space stapler ranks as well as red swingline stapler. Interestingly, the term red swingline stapler office space is a very popular search term with very little competition. The best strategy here would be to have a different page optimised for each of these terms. Use the Overture keyword tool and Google Adwords tool to research and identify your best key word phrases. It also pays to see what key words your successful competitors are optimising for.

Put your key word phrase in your title tag Forget about putting your company name in the title tag (unless it is a valuable part of the key words), it’s a waste of words and will not help you rank in the search engines. The first three of four words in your title tag should be the key word phrase you are trying to optimise for.

Write a compelling description tag Title tags are for search engines, description tags are for humans. Spend time crafting a description tag that compels the reader to click on your listing. Come up with a great offer, use action words. Example: Get your own genuine red Swingline stapler here. Great prices, fast delivery, 12 month guarantee. 1000′s sold around the world. As seen in the movie Office Space.

Use H1 tags An often neglected search engine optimisation technique is to put your key words in H1 tags on your page. This tip alone can drastically improve your search engine rankings. Similarly, the use of bold and strong html tags can emphasise a key word phrase withing the paragraph text where it may not be appropriate to use H1 or H2 tags.

Get quality one-way incoming links through article marketing As far as Google is concerned, link exchanges are just about dead. They can help to get you site spidered and indexed more quickly, but these day they add very little in terms of search engine rankings. A far better approach is to write interesting and informative articles and submit them to article directories. Make sure that you use the author bio/resource box to maximum advantage by using your key word phrase in the link anchor text, AND, by pointing the anchor text to the correct page. You home page may not be the best choice of pages for your selected key phrase. This will also ensure that more pages than just your home page gets indexed.

Get a decent key word ratio Aim for a keyword density of around 3-5% of the page contents. Try to weave your key word phrase into the page so that it reads naturally. Use headings and sub-headings that include your key words.

Use alt tags and description tags on images Key words used image file names, alt tags and description tags add to the key word density of any web page. They doesn’t make a huge difference, but every little bit helps. In some product classes a Google image search may lead web surfers to your web site.

John Hacking is Marketing Manager for a Brisbane web design company and Product Manager for a Brisbane SEO company. He now conducts Brisbane search engine optimisation training courses for web masters and small business owners.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Hacking

As one of the most important ranking factors on today’s modern search engines, link popularity starting to gain public exposure, the misinformation about what link popularity is and what it isn’t also starting to grow. Everyday thousand of new webmasters jump head first into their first search engine optimization project after reading a few SEO forum posts or news articles.

Unfortunately these new webmasters have only a partial view of the search engine optimization process and link building that will actually produce lasting results on the top three search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN. The key I would like to emphasize here is achieving and maintaining “lasting results”. If your want your website to do well on the search engines even 5 years from now, it’s imperative you play by the rules and gain as much understanding about safe and effective link popularity building as possible.

Considering the sophisticated ranking algorithms used by especially Google, it’s very easy for inexperienced web masters to do irreparable damage to their sites by using spammy on-page optimization and link popularity building techniques that Google frowns upon. The real problem is, most of these search engine fooling tricks or sometimes referred to as “black hat SEO” techniques are not even known to new website owners.

Straight answers on link building methods that can hurt your ranking In this article I would like to shed light on some of the link popularity building techniques that will produce very limited results or worse will get your website banned on Google.

Before we start, I would like to introduce you to some basic concept about link popularity. A link in its simplest terms is a connection from one website to another. You can read more about web links on World Wide Web Consortium website. Search engines use the number and relevance of links to a website to measure its popularity. Therefore it naturally follows, the websites with the most links and the most relevance of those links will come out on top of the search results. Well, as I will reveal below, there is a whole lot more to links than you can imagine.

The risks of link building mistakes Since the link popularity building methods below have varying degrees of negative effects on your search engine ranking from no effect to an outright ban by the search engines, I will place a “Danger Score” next to each of these techniques to better illustrate the risks associated with each method.

A “Danger Score” of 10 will most likely result in a search engine ban while a “Danger Score” of zero will have little or no negative effect. Please also keep in mind Google, Yahoo and MSN have different levels of link spam tolerance. Google clearly leads the way in weeding out link spam and is much more vigilant in defending its search results against sites using link popularity building methods listed below.

Lets start by listing some of link popularity techniques that will not get you brownie points on the search engines.

The weakest links in link popularity building are:

1) Website links in forum posts signatures used to be a favorite method a few years ago to gain link popularity in a short amount of time. Although contributing to community forums is a great way to get your site noticed by other forum members, it’s not an effective link popularity building method anymore if you try to rely solely on a website link in your forum post signatures. (Danger Score:0)

2) Blog comment spam involves posting comments to blogs with a hyperlink pointing back to a website using a well targeted anchor text. This link posting method usually automated with the use of scripting languages and bots. This is a very popular method used by many sites peddling porn, pharmacy and many other products. Don’t get discouraged posting blog comments if you have something worthwhile to say, you can only get yourself in trouble if you over do it by adding a large number of links or try to automate comment posting. (Danger Score:7)

3) Guestbook posting spam is very similar to blog comment spam. The guestbook posts are sometimes automated and if there are a large number of these links identified by search engines pointing to your website, it can results in a ranking loss or a ban. (Danger Score:7)

4) Large number of inbound links from no Page Rank or low Page Rank pages can send a sign of low website quality or link manipulation to Google. Although the Google Page Rank is not as important as it used to be, nonetheless it serves as an acid test for minimum site quality. It’s becoming harder and harder to find new websites with a high Page Rank score as Google updates its Page Rank less frequently. (Danger Score:2)

5) Large number of links from the same C class IP block indicates the website is most likely involved in inbound link spamming. Since class C IP addresses use the first three octets to identify a network, the search engines substantially reduce the link popularity score being passed from one website to another in the same network. A large number of inbound links from the same class C IP addresses also suggest the use of the same hosting company or web server. (Danger Score:8)

6) Large number of links from unrelated sites suggest a link manipulation scheme since the website may lack unique content to attract links naturally. This type of scenario can often be observed in new websites involved in indiscriminate link exchanges using link exchange networks whether it’s automated or manual. It’s inevitable you will have some low quality unrelated links pointing to your website, but if the majority of inbound links are unrelated, you can quickly find yourself in a lot of trouble. (Danger Score:7)

7) Link farms and web rings are setup with the sole purpose to manipulate link popularity by using a central database, automated scripting and a network of websites. This method is usually beyond the reach of the average webmasters as it takes technological savvy and a large number of servers and other resources to execute. (Danger Score:10)

Interlinking your own websites is a similar linking scheme to getting links from the same C class IP block, but in this case the WHOIS website registration information may be also used by the search engines to link the owner to all the websites involved in the link network. (Danger Score:8)

9) Co-op Ad networks such as the Digital Point CO-Op Ad Network are used to automatically interconnect websites involved in the network by inserting a small piece of code on their web pages. Every website participating in the network has to be validated first before joining the ad co-op. Google recently took a much harder line against sites using these type of link networks and the risks of getting banned has increased. (Danger Score:9)

10) Paid links is a very controversial subject in the SEO industry, since Google itself is making most of its revenue from selling small text ads next to its search results and other web services. As long as the paid links remain “under the radar” of the search engines the link popularity boost can be very significant to a website. Google is using both human power and automated tools to detect paid text links. When a website it identified as a known seller of text links, the link popularity benefits are no longer passed on to the target website, while the website owner continues to pay sometimes astronomical monthly fees for the text links. (Danger Score:2)

11) Automated link exchanges using server side scripting and databases are still popping up as the lure of easy and fast link popularity building attracts thousands of new website owners. As the saying goes “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”. In most cases automated scripts are used to execute the link exchanges and they usually leave a very large “foot print”. The search engines can easily identify the websites involved, and punish them accordingly. The automated link exchange services using server side scripts are sure way to loose your search engine ranking or get your site de-indexed by the search engines. (Danger Score:8)

12) Identical anchor text used in a large percentage of inbound links are unnatural and can be picked out by the search engines very easily. When linking occurs naturally people use all kinds of different anchor text to link to a website. When the same anchor text is used in a large number of inbound links, it’s a sign of someone trying to manipulate the inbound links and the search results. (Danger Score:5)

13) Run of site links are placed in the footer or side navigation of a website that is repeated on every page using a server side include or other HTML scripting method. Run of site links can also suggest the use of paid text links to the search engines. (Danger Score:4)

14) 3 way link exchanges occur when a website is invited to participate in a link exchange, but the inbound link is placed on a third website participating in the link exchange. Despite what many people think, three-way link exchanges can be easily identified by search engines and if there are a large number of these types of links are present, it can result in a ranking drop or ban. (Danger Score:3)

15) Low quality directory links could give a decent ranking boost to a website a few years ago, but that is no longer the case. Inbound links from brand new, template based general directories are not going to result in a link popularity increase for your website. These new directories are a waste of time and money to submit to. If you want to submit to well established, older directories, please visit our internet directory list page. (Danger Score:2)

16) Inbound links from sites which are heavily optimized without contact information, phone number or a physical address imply a website that was created with the sole purpose of getting higher ranking in the search results and/or pass link popularity score to other websites. Most of these websites don’t have any real products or services to offer, they are sometimes also used by SEO companies selling permanent text links for a fee or used to place their own clients’ website links on them. If you can’t find contact information on the web site, only a web form, it’s most likely a low quality resource. (Danger Score:1)

17) Inbound links from new sites under 1 year old will not pass as much link popularity score as older domains. The fact is Google favors old websites in its search results especially for very competitive keyword terms. (Danger Score:1)

18) Inbound links from affiliate or Google Adsense sites are relatively poor links due to the fact these sites contain very little unique content. Most of these site solely exist to generate ad revenue from Google’s Adsense program, or affiliate relationships.(Danger Score:2)

19) Inbound links using Javascript or other redirect methods are sometimes used by unscrupulous webmasters creating a perception of a fair link exchange with new webmasters. The problems is, most search engines can only follow static links to your website and therefore any type of redirect to your website will not result in link popularity vote that can be recognized by the search engines.(Danger Score:0)

20) Adding too many links too fast is a sure way to get noticed by the search engines for the wrong reasons. Except in some special cases when a website gains a lot of public exposure and links due to a TV ad, website blog or other forms of advertising medium. Inbound links appearing too fast especially from unrelated websites can result in a ranking drop or complete ban. Slow and steady, natural link building is the name of the game. (Danger Score:5)

In Conclusion Search engines are much more sophisticated than people give them credit for. Avoid damaging your web site’s link reputation on the search engines by staying clear of the above link popularity building methods. Fixing link popularity building mistakes is hard work and can take a long time to correct. Before you start your search engine optimization project, learn all you can about effective and safe link building methods that will guarantee your web site’s long term success.

Joel Katona is the founder of Trendmetrix Software a full service SEO Company and the architect behind SEO Studio a leading SEO Software. Don’t forget to check out his free step-by-step SEO Training guide. For more timely website promotion tips and search engine optimization advice please sign up for his free SEO Newsletter

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joel_Katona

Link popularity is simply the total number of web pages that link to your web page. Link popularity is an extremely important factor that is used by most of the major search engines to rank web pages and web sites. In general, the major search engines consider link popularity a key factor in their algorithms to determine the relevancy of your web page to a particular keyword search query.

Good link popularity is important because it can increase the visitor traffic to your web page. The reputation of your web site (i.e., votes of confidence from other web sites) is a measure of the site’s link popularity. Your web page rank (i.e., the position your web page occupies in a search engine’s results page) to a particular search query can be improved by increasing the number of relevant and quality web sites that have incoming links to your web page.

An incoming link is considered to be relevant if it is meaningful and relates to your web page. If you sell golf clubs online, relevant incoming links could be from: golf club manufacturers, golf apparel sites, competitors, golf-related directories and so forth. In addition, internal links (links from web pages within your web site) are considered relevant and essential because they help your web page visitor to navigate your web site.

It is not enough to just have web page links coming into your web page (link popularity). The quality of the incoming link is also critical. A search engine will put more emphasis on a high quality web page (ranked high by a particular search engine) than on a low quality web page (ranked low by a particular search engine). It will take many lower quality incoming links to approach the level of a single high quality incoming link.

The major search engines do more than match the content of your web page to the keyword search query to determine if there’s a good match for a particular search. They look at the quality of the links to your web page. The reason is because there are thousands, if not millions, of web pages that contain the search query’s particular keyword or keyword phrase in the web page content. The search engines want to deliver a list of relevant and ordered web pages to meet a user’s query search.

In addition to the link popularity, search engines also look at the anchor text contained in the incoming link to your web page. It will consider your web page more relevant to the keyword query search if the text in the incoming link to your web page contains the queried keywords.

The number and quality of incoming links to your web page can be an excellent source of targeted and consistent visitor traffic to your site. In addition, search engines are more likely to index your web pages on a more frequent basis if you have many incoming relevant and quality links. The search engine spiders have a higher probability of finding you through the external incoming links to your site as your link popularity increases.

Reciprocal linking or link exchanging involves another web page linking to your web page and you linking back to their web page. If you select targeted and relevant web pages to exchange links with then you have a higher probability of gaining increased visitor traffic to your web page. In addition, your web page ranking on a search engine keyword query is also likely to improve as mentioned earlier.

Your overall marketing plan should include a link exchange campaign to help improve your search engine rankings and the visitor traffic to your web page. Spend the necessary time and energy to locate and exchange links with link exchange partners that provide a good match with your web page. Review the potential link partner’s web site theme and content to determine if their link would be relevant to your site. Consider only those web sites as exchange partners with themes or topics that complement or relate to your web page.

It is important that you have a good link exchange strategy in place and a process to manage the reciprocal links. Don’t link to a web page if they are not linking back to your web page. Link exchange campaigns require your attention and monitoring. You can perform the link exchange management manually or you can use a computer program that will do it for you.

There are a number of good programs that perform link exchange management functions. However, there are some programs that do a poor job. For example, some management software programs will perform automated search engine queries to harvest prospects that are not relevant for linking to your web page. Do not use “link farms” in your link exchange campaign. These sites provide hundreds of non-relevant links with no meaningful content to your site that the search engines can detect and potentially use to ban or penalize your site.

The vast majority web site owners that participate in a link exchange program do not understand the issues and benefits of the exchange. As a result, they do not maximize the potential value to be gained from the link exchange. Learn and implement the proper strategies and your web page will potentially benefit from improved search engine ranking and increased targeted and qualified visitors.

Every web site that provides links to other web pages should have a links page. Your links page will be an excellent resource for the visitors to your web site. Your web site will be more helpful and credible to your visitors if you provide useful and relevant links on your links page. You can start utilizing the power of your links page when it becomes a service to your visitors rather than a tool to obtain higher search engine ranking.

You need to categorize your links if you have a lot of outgoing links. Don’t try to put all your links on one links page where it has the appearance of a link farm (i.e., no valuable content or relevance) to the search engines that want to index the page. Create a useful links page that shows only the link categories with separate links that take your visitor to an individual link page for each category. The intent is to provide a resource for your visitors that is useful and can be easily navigated. Search engines love this type of structure that they can fully index.

The incoming links to your web page and the outgoing links to other web pages should be structured in a clear manner. Provide your link exchange partners with the exact HTML code to be included in the link on their web page. This code should include your URL, your anchor link text with the appropriate keyword or keyword phrase and a concise description that incorporates your web site name and the appropriate keyword or keyword phrase.

Copyright (C) F. Terrence Markle – All Rights Reserved You have permission to publish this article in its entirety, as long as the bylines and the resource box are included. You must make all links active.

Get my FREE report “The Niche Factor” on niche marketing with Master Resale Rights at: http://www.QuikSystems.com/report/niche2.php

Get my FREE report “The AdSense Factor” on adsense marketing with Master Resale Rights at: http://www.QuikSystems.com/report/adsense2.php

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=F._Terrence_Markle

Building link popularity is one of the most important elements of search engine optimisation and also one of the most time-consuming. It amazes me that I still receive countless emails from so called SEO experts inviting me to participate in link exchanges. Some of them even offering to swap links with a site totally unrelated to what we do! No wonder our industry comes under such fire.

Let’s go back to basics and understand the concept of linking. Linking in its simplest form is about taking a user on a stage in their online journey, whether it be to find a product, piece of news and information or to learn something new. Now most of the time we know what we are looking for online, so our session has a goal, and with that goal in mind we look to trawl the web and put our trust in navigating around websites till we achieve our goal. Sometimes it can take minutes and a straight forward visit to a search engine and a destination site, other times it can takes us hours, with a journey that takes us in and out of a number of different websites.

Now if you keep that concept in mind when thinking about link building you’ll soon realise that the ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ approach to building link popularity is fundamentally flawed. Links should be awarded on merit and not through back scratching.

Seeking out link exchanges is an inefficient use of your time

What I am going to tell you next is going to transform the way you approach building link popularity. Let’s take a look at a classic link swap scenario. You first of all spend a few days looking for sites that have link swap directories on their website. You contact the webmaster explaining that you would like to engage in a link exchange. The webmaster agrees to link to you once you have placed a link back to his site first. You set up the link and email the webmaster. You visit the site to check your link and you find your link buried deep within the site on a page that has a low page rank and surrounded by 50 other web links. You then repeat the process with another site. Now here comes the killer, you’ve spent all that time building up those links, a few months later you return to some of the site’s where your link was placed and you find that some of them have been removed. You get in touch with the webmasters and ask them why your link has been removed. They get back to you and tell you it was an accident. Yeh right, they removed the link deliberately so they could gain a one way link from you. After a few months has passed you notice that your link popularity has not increased in Google – so again you revisit some of the sites that were linking to you and check your links (or by now you might have bought some link checking software to do that for you). You see that your links are still there, but you’ve read that sometimes webmaster’s adopt sneaky techniques to prevent the search engine spiders from following the link. Low and behold you see within the source code of one site that they are using a “nofollow” tag on the link.

Now tell me is all this effort worth it? Link exchanges open up a new can of worms for you – coming into contact with black hat SEOs!

Now consider the opposite. Why not spend the time on creating compelling content or interactive tools that people will naturally want to link to. Not only are they likely to provide you with a link from a page that is likely to be visited, but it will be a one way link, and a few one way links from respected websites are worth more than 50 reciprocals, take my word for it. Plus you’ll have something of real value on your site that visitors will use and may even tell other people about. With this approach to link building you’ll generate more ‘noise’ about your website and encourage other website owners to link to you, because you’ll have something on your own site, that will be of interest to their own visitors.

With link building it’s better to think about building a name for yourself and focus on growing your online reputation as opposed to growing your list of reciprocal link partners. So the message is clear: ‘quality over quantity’ is what counts when it comes to growing link popularity.

Damon Lightley is a director at search engine marketing specialists, SiteVisibility. SiteVisibility helps its clients attract, convert and retain profitable customers through their websites.

For more information on link building visit SiteVisibility

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Damon_Lightley

Link popularity is also known as link building, link exchanging, inbound links etc. It refers to the quality and quantity of incoming links to your site. It is a very important part of the search engine optimization process and plays an important role for getting high search engine rankings on specific keywords.

It is not enough to go for quantity of inbound links when building high link popularity. The quality of inbound links is much more important than quantity for getting that high link popularity. In other words, having a lower number of quality inbound links is more valuable than having a large quantity of poor links in for SEO.

Generally there are three types of link exchanging – one way link, reciprocal link and triangular. One way linking is the process of getting inbound links without having to give a link back. Free directory submission, article submission, blogs, and forums are the best sources of getting one way links to your sites. Reciprocal linking is the process of both giving and receiving a link. In a reciprocal link exchange, you put your link partner’s link on a page within your web site, and in return, your link partner will also link to you from his or her web site.

One-way links are more valuable in terms of page rank than reciprocal links, but it is very hard to get one-way links from web sites with a high Google Page Rank. Although directory submission is the easiest way to get one-way links, they do not hold the kind of value as receiving a one-way link from a site with a high Page Rank. The reason for this mostly has to do with the fact that in order to submit your web site to a category that is relevant to your site’s contents, you have to bury your link more than 2 categories deep in the directory. For example, if you have “USA based SEO sites”, you would submit your site in: main/ computer/ internet/ word wide web / SEO/ USA. This means your link is not indexed until after 5 clicks from the directory’s main page. The further away your link is from the directory’s main page, the harder it will be for search engine spiders to crawl and index it. This drawback is not experienced with reciprocal link exchanging though, which is the reason most webmasters generally suggest reciprocal link exchanges in addition to one-way link exchange.

It is important to consider some basic things during reciprocal link exchanging in order to truly capitalize on the potential benefits. The following are some tips to consider when it comes to reciprocal link exchanging:

* Link exchanging must be between relevant sites. Link exchange between non related sites might negatively affect the ranking of your websites in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs)
Avoid triangular, or 3- way link exchanges.

* Link pages should not be more than 2 clicks from the site’s index page.

* The reciprocating page must be indexed in Google as well as other search engines.

* Pay careful consideration to the meta tags of your links page. The links page should have proper meta tags and must be related to the your site’s keywords.

* Use appropriate anchor text with relevant keywords when exchanging links with other sites.

* Also check “no index, no follow” tag on the reciprocating page’s meta tags. If you find such this type of tag being used in the meta tags, then avoid exchanging links with those sites.

Vision Media Corporation is a Las Vegas & Nevada based search engine optimization, software, design, and business development firm specializing in new approaches to information technology and it’s relationship to marketing strategies and business models. For more information regarding search engine optimization services offered by Vision Media Corporation, browse to our site: Search Engine Optimization Phoenix

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tejrin_Raghav

So tell the truth, were you popular in high school? Did you have a lot of friends, and a wide social circle? Were you an athlete? Did your accomplishments extend far outside the halls of your alma mater to neighboring schools and counties? If so, then congratulations; you’re probably in the minority of those reading this article. What does this example have to do with link popularity you ask; more than you think.

Just as in high school, on the World Wide Web, your website is known by the company it keeps. Link to the wrong site or “hang with the wrong crowd” and you could be ostracized by the search engine community before you even begin. Achieve quality inbound links from a wide range of popular kids on the internet, however, and watch your site’s online profile soar. Sounds simple, and it is, if you know what to do to climb the online social ladder that is Link Popularity.

But before we get to that, what exactly is Link Popularity? Simply defined, Link Popularity is a measure of the quantity and quality of other web sites that link to your site on the internet at any given time. It is considered an off-the-page criteria that is greatly utilized by search engines to determine the overall importance and quality of your site to the online community. Because of its impartial nature, a site with a very high number of incoming links is usually viewed as highly relevant to the online community at large and thus highly visible within relevant search engine results. Whereas a content-poor site will attract fewer incoming links and thus hold little value to the same visitors.

What is the current link popularity of your site today? Take a moment to enter your site url at popular free link tool www.linkpopularity.com, then come back for the rest of this article…..

Still there, good! The results probably weren’t what you had hoped for though, where they? Not to worry; probably the biggest threat to you obtaining a high link popularity score for your site is relying on old information. To that end, below is a quick 10-step CURRENT process that can be implemented immediately to increase your site’s overall link popularity:

Step 1 – SUBMIT YOUR SITE TO OPEN DIRECTORY (DMOZ) AND YAHOO – Although neither of these sites are the 800 lb. gorillas they used to be, any link from these sites is going to increase your online profile immediately and very visibly. Find your appropriate category in both sites and submit for free with DMOZ and invest the $299 for a yearly indexing with Yahoo. Although DMOZ is still incredibly slow in adding new sites, keep at it, find the appropriate editor and send him cookies or flowers if necessary (couldn’t hurt?) then be patient.

Step 2 – ADD YOUR KEYWORDS TO THE LINKING ANCHOR TEXT – When at all possible, try to have an on-point relevant keyword phrase used as the linking text within any inbound link your seek for your site. If all you can manage is your site name or your url, that is certainly fine. But if you are selling toothbrushes to Eskimos, then “Eskimo toothbrushes for sale” as the linking keyword phrase from one site to yours is always the way to go.

Step 3 – WRITE ARTICLES AND SUBMIT PRESS RELEASES – Hey, look what I am doing right now! I could be watching ESPN, but I am writing this article instead. Write articles and submit press releases when you have a personnel change, introduce or upgrade a service or product or when you have a topic of interest you wish to share with the online world web community. Don’t have a blog? Get one! This is a simple way to get your articles and press releases out for indexing and review. Make sure to include links to your site where appropriate and watch your link popularity grow and grow.

Step 4 – FIND OUT WHO LINKS TO YOUR COMPETITORS – Go to Google.com and enter this into this search query: link:www.yourcompetitor.com. Do the same for Yahoo by entering linkdomain:www.your-competitor.com -site:www.your-competitor.com into the search field. Seek out the sites linking to your competitors and convince them to link to you instead. You win TWICE with this approach. You gain a quality link and an increase in your overall popularity while your competitor LOSES a link and achieves a lower popularity score in return.

Step 5 – CREATE AN AFFILIATE PROGRAM – Nothing generates quality, inbound links to your site faster than an established, commission-paying affiliate program. Whether your site is product or service-based, an affiliate program can be just the thing that takes your site and its link popularity to new heights. Visit www.CommissionJunction.com or www.LinkShare.com to set-up a new affiliate program of your design today and watch your online profile grow by leaps and bounds.

Step 6 – DEEP LINK YOUR SITE – This step is vastly overlooked by even the most savvy of online marketers initiating a new link popularity campaign. Make sure that links you seek out or solicit don’t just link to your home page, but ALL pages of your website. This process has numerous benefits including expanding your overall online link profile as well as generating unique Google PageRank values for each and every one of your site’s pages instead of just your home page.

Step 7 – SIGN UP ON GUESTBOOKS AND FORUMS – If you don’t participate in forums on your site topic or remember to sign-in when visiting a new site for the first time, now is the time to make such actions a habit. Always post a message or participate in a forum thread whenever possible and include a link to your site in your signature where appropriate. These “sig” files do get indexed and really add up, especially if the site forum in question is something highly regarded in your specific industry.

Step 8 – CONTACT RECIPROCAL LINKS BY PHONE NOT EMAIL – You would be shocked how successful this really is. More people are inclined to respond to your request when you introduce yourself by phone and let them know that you were visiting their site. Tell the person you are linking to their site, asking permission of course, and then politely ask for a link back. Cement the request by following up by email; then wait for the links to roll-in (oh, and get rid of the form letters; they don’t work!).

Step 9 – AVOID LINK FARMS AND LINK EXCHANGES – Reputation on the web is more important than ever. Again, just like friendships in high school, it’s better to have fewer higher-quality links to your site than hundreds of off-point, non-relevant links that do nothing to enhance the overall experience of the online community. Stay away, far away, from companies promising you hundreds of links to your site overnight. At best you don’t need the links, and at worst, you could be banned by the major search engines altogether.

Step 10 – DOWNLOAD THE GOOGLE TOOLBAR – This very simple technique allows you to view all potential link partners by the very important Google PageRank score (1-10) that is viewable in this browser. Use the toolbar to keep tabs on your own site’s PageRank score, than seek out complimentary, highly relevant linking partners that have a Google PageRank score of 6 or higher whenever possible. Convince a handful of high Google PageRank sites to link back to you and watch your site take off.

Remember, just like in high school, you and your site will be known by the company kept. Follow the simple, ten step plan outlined above, and you will be well on your way to achieving real, measured, lasting success online. Be the popular site on the block today; it’s easier then you think. Go ahead, be popular!

SEO marketing professional Casey Markee is president of San Diego, CA, based SEO firm Media Wyse. Casey has over 7 yrs. of experience within the online marketing arena and holds graduate degrees in Marketing & E-Commerce. A Qualified Adwords Professional with Google, Casey’s current client list boasts some of the top companies in San Diego including world-renown diamond retailer, The Diamond Source. Contact him today through http://www.MediaWyse.com with your SEO questions or assistance on your upcoming campaign.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Casey_Markee

Link popularity is the number of links pointing to a website. It is an important factor that major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN use to rank web pages.

Webmasters figure out that in order for their web pages to rank well at the search engines for certain keywords, they need a lot of incoming links with these targeted key words. Linking schemes of all kinds were hatched…mini-sites, site networks, link farms and reciprocal linking, just to mention a few. Some schemes like link farms were clear indication of manipulating the search engines.

Google has clamped down on such practices and further fine-tuned its SERP algorithm to stop manipulation by anyone as evidenced by ‘Jagger’.

Focus on the long term. Build a site that is credible to the search engines and your website visitors.

Here are 7 ethical link-building strategies for you work with…

1. Internal linking. Having a well organized internal linking structure insures that your website gets ‘spidered’ and that all pages of your website gets indexed by the search engines. This in turn increases the chances of the number of phrases that your website has the potential to rank for. And I have had website traffic from key phrases that I never thought of.

2. One-way links. Human edited directories look like a thing of the past. With Google being more efficient and accurate as ever there’s no need to turn to human edited directories. A directory may get you a few click-throughs in a month or none at all. However, to be listed in a high quality directory like DMOZ and Yahoo can increase your PageRank.

The way to get inbound links is distribute content. There are many article directories on the Internet. Just include a link in your article. With article distribution you can choose the exact anchor text for the link.

3. Reciprocal links. What is reciprocal linking? It is simply trading links with other sites. You add their links to your site and vice versa. In times past website owners have sizeable directories with multiple links that are not relevant to theirs. Now, search engines have become wiser and look for link relevance. A word of advice here, know whom you are trading link with. Don’t just choose any Tom, Dick, Harry or toothless Jane to be your link partners.

People have asked whether they would be penalized by the search engines for reciprocal links. Well, at least for now, they are still acceptable.

4. Varied the Text of your inbound links. It will not appear natural to the search engines for every site that links to you to have the same link description. So vary the text of your inbound links using a few key phrases.

5. Grow your links at a steady rate. Google penalizes new sites with low-traffic that grow their links too quickly, whereas a well-established high traffic site that increases by a few thousand links a month will viewed as normal. The rate at which links are created without being penalized by Google, is directly proportional to the age of the website. For owners of new sites, bear this in mind, if you are thinking about buying inbound links.

6. Have inbound links from different ranking sites.If all your inbound links are Pr6 and Pr7 sites, then you will send a strong indication that you have purchased those links. Your inbound links will not appear natural to the search engines. It is more natural for you to have a large number of Pr1 and Pr2 inbound links with decreasing number of inbound links as you move higher up the PageRank scale.

7. Actively participate in forums or blogs. Don’t just post threads indiscriminately on forums. Search engines view this as spamming. Participate in forums to learn and to contribute to the communities and at the same time gather inbound links. You will also build credibility for yourself and your business if you are a solution to people’s problems.

Blogging is an effective way of gathering inbound links. If you have a personal blog, it is easier to post comments at other sites. But do spam blast your comments with advertisements. Just provide a link to your site with your comments. Your goals are to gather inbound links and to gain a good reputation online. Comment intelligently on the specific subject. A well thought out comment will not only attract the search engines, but also more readers of the blog to your website. They will naturally link to you if they find articles of good quality at your website.

To achieve good rankings at the Search Engine through link popularity requires time and patience. Stick to the sound practices of link building. Impatience could cause you to incur penalties. It was once rumored, but now quite evident that Google uses a ‘sandbox’ to keep questionable sites in the hold until they have aged to a point. Then they are released at the sole discretion of Google. Other search engines also have their own safeguards to keep their SERPs from being cluttered with questionable sites.

The underlying principle is to grow your links ‘organically’ whilst adding content of value to your website. Ethical SEO is not a black art. It is a matter of adhering to the guidelines, terms and conditions stipulated by the search engines.

Gerrick W
mailto:gw@1stinternetmarketingsolution.com
Information and software tools you need to effectively market your online business.

Visit:http://www.1stinternetmarketingsolution.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gerrick_W

Link popularity is without doubt one of the most important aspects of a search engine ranking algorithm – this variable tells the search engine how many web sites out there are linking to your web site, which gives a really good indication of how popular or important your site is.

Your web site NEEDS links, it can’t survive at the top of the search engine rankings without them. In this article I am going to explain how anyone can get good quality links for their web site, without paying for them…

Link building for your web site is not technically difficult, it just requires some time and dedication to do the job properly. If you don’t have the time and discipline to do the job right, I strongly suggest hiring someone – WCR Internet Marketing provides this service in some of their Web Marketing plans.

I recommend only looking for links from sites that are related to your site. If you can’t determine a relationship between your site and theirs, move along, there are plenty more sites out there that are more relevant!

Always remember why you have a web site – you want people to find your site useful, so make sure you are only linking to useful, relevant content. Think about this – if a surfer is browsing a site about rebuilding a car engine, they aren’t likely to find a mortgage broker link very useful, are they? Stick to linking amongst relevant sites, and I guarantee you that in the long term your site will benefit greatly.

This is the 6 Step process we use when building links for clients:

1) Determine what sort of links you want.

This is extremely important. The types of links that you’re looking for are industry specific. If you have a web site that is focussed on the rebuilding of car engines, you will be looking for links in the automotive or car related areas in directories. If you are selling electrical contracting services, you will want to look for regional listings or general business listings to find possible links.

2) Find your source of links.

So we’re looking for links that are relevant to your web site. The best place to source your links are directories such as DMOZ. Go to a directory, browse through to a category that suits your site (a lot of the time there will be more than one suitable category) and you will see a whole lot of other relevant sites, perfect for sourcing quality links. Try the directories below, they should keep you going for a while:

http://directory.google.com

http://directory.yahoo.com

http://dmoz.org

3) Determine whether or not a site is relevant.

It’s time to start visiting web sites. Have a look at each site one by one to see if a link to your site would realistically fit in. A webmaster isn’t likely to want to change the structure of their site just to add a link to you, so if you don’t think you’re going to fit in, close the site and move along to the next. If you think you have a chance of getting linked, move on to the next step.

4) Determine where on the site your link would fit best.

If it’s a directory that you’re browsing through, find the most appropriate category for your site. If it’s just a web site, have a look for a links page or any other pages that have links or might be suitable to have links on it.

5) Submit your site.

If it’s a directory that you’re on, once you are in the appropriate category for your web site, look around the page for a place to submit your site. Quite often you will find something like “Add URL”, “Submit your site” or “Add a link” etc. Use this link to submit your site.

If you’re on a relevant web site and there is no “Add URL” function, you will need to find an email address for the webmaster. Keep in mind that when emailing the webmaster, always personalize your request – don’t just copy and paste a template to thousands of different webmasters – that’s a sure way to have your request sent straight to the recycle bin.

Take the time to look around for a name, it won’t always be available, but when it is – use it. Let the webmaster know where you think it might be suitable to have a link to your site and let him know if you are happy to reciprocate the link. At the end of the day, the easier you make it for them, and the more polite your request is, the more likely you are to end up with a link.

6) Document all of your work.

I can’t stress this point enough, it is absolutely the most important part of any link building campaign. Create a Word document with all your site information in it (Title, Description, URL). Also in this Word document, have a few email templates prepared for different scenarios – I know I said don’t use templates, but you don’t have to type out every request every time you want to ask for a link – make up a template that you can fill out specific information on like the web site address, where you would like your link to be placed etc.

Make sure you also document each individual link request you make – every time you ask someone for a link, write it down in your Word document. That way, at a later date, you can go through the list and check who is linking to you and who isn’t.

In Closing

Remember to be patient and keep your eye out for new potential links. Improving your web site link popularity won’t send your web site straight to the top of the search engine rankings, but it will help you in the long term. If you plan on building a successful web site over a number of years, a properly organized link building campaign will do you the world of good. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Charles Ryder is the CEO of WCR Internet Marketing, a specialist Australian Search Engine Optimisation company. For a free site analysis, visit http://www.wcr-internet-marketing.com.au

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Charles_Ryder