As we learned in the introductory lesson, link popularity is made up by the quality and quantity of inbound links. Another concept to always keep in mind is keyword theme, made up by all words and phrases used in the anchor texts of all links that a search engine can detect pointing to your site from other domains. The closer your keyword theme mirrors the keyword optimization profile you used when optimizing your pages, the better off your SEO efforts will be. A comprehensive keyword theme is the heart of overall inbound link quality, which, in turn, is at the core of a strong link popularity factor.Link popularity is one of the single most influential factors for determining how well a web site will perform in search engine rankings.
In the past a Web page’s ranking was determined mainly by the number of keyword occurrences within “on-page” elements like page text, META tags, title tag etc, Web developers soon learned that they could trick a search engine and make it return their web pages on search engine results by stuffing their pages with keywords. The search engines had to find a way to take the control away from spammers. So they started to give more and more weight to the elements out of direct control of the web page creator i.e. “off-the-page” factors. Search engines made the assumption that the greater the number of links from other sites pointing to a web site, the more popular the web site is and therefore a more quality resource.
In response, Web site owners figured out many ways to get links pointing to their sites. One of them are the link farms that we mentioned in a previous lesson. Link farms are pages that contain nothing more than a collection of links. So the search engines gradually shifted away from estimating the link quality and started to assign a quality factor to each of the links pointing to a Web site. Now Web sites that have a higher number of high quality links are looked upon favorably by the search engines.
Link quality consists of the following factors:
- Page Rank of the site providing the inbound link
- Relevance of the content of the linking site to the content of your site
- Relevance of words used in the anchor text of the links to the content of your page that the link points to
- Number of other links on the linking page. The lower this number, the more valuable the link is
Links pointing to your site from a low ranking, low traffic and unrelated website are nearly worthless.
This lesson deals with four main types of links: inbound links, outbound links, reciprocal links (alternatively called “backlinks” for our purposes, although in some sources these two terms denote different concepts) and, finally, one-way links.
Inbound links are links that originate from an outside web site (domain) . Outbound links are links from your pages pointing to a page on an outside domain. Reciprocal links are when both your page and a page on other site link to each other. IMPORTANT: the links are considered reciprocal if they bind pages, not sites. The links on the following picture are not reciprocal:
Finally, one-way links are when either Site 1 links to Site 2 OR Site 2 links to Site 1 but does not receive a reciprocal link (backlink) from the same page it links to. The links on the picture above are one-way links.
The type of links which have the most influence on your link popularity are inbound one-way links. Sometimes it is assumed that outbound links might decrease a Web site’s link popularity. This is wrong. While outbound links do nothing to increase your link popularity, you do not give away any link popularity when you link to another site.
Due to common misuse of the terms “link popularity“, “site” and “page” it is often thought that a Web site has a single link popularity figure associated with it.for the entire domain. This is incorrect: each page of your site has its own link popularity and keyword theme.
On the second picture, the link BX adds to link popularity of site 2 (page X) and the link CY adds to link popularity of site 1 (page C).
Reciprocal links can add to your link popularity if the Web site that you exchange links with has a higher link popularity than your site. However, reciprocal links are not as powerful as inbound one-way links, because the search engines assume such links are produced in an artificial manner as a result of link exchange.
Methods and techniques of building a link popularity
You should now understand that the best way to build link popularity is by finding sources of inbound, one-way high quality links. This can be achieved in a number of different acceptable ways.
Directories
Directories are categorized listings of links from around the web . There is a great variety of directories on the web, and though only a few main directories can directly influence your inclusion and ranking in the search engines, almost any directory is good for increasing your link popularity. They provide a great source of quality inbound, one-way links because you do not need to link back to a directory once included in its index, and many directories are considered expert sites when “casting a vote” for your site. Be careful not to confuse directories with Free-For-All link pages that are of little value. Free-For-All pages usually never decline your submission, although they say they may speak of the possibility. Getting listed in valuable human-edited directories will take more time, if the directory has a paid inclusion option, this process may be expedited. Getting listed in quality directories such as DMOZ or Yahoo can be more beneficial for your link popularity than a lot of links from smaller, newer directories.
Site content and emailing web site owners
The traditional and the most powerful way to get inbound, one-way links is to have great site content that other web sites will want to link to. Unfortunately, you have no control over how soon and how many other webmasters will find your resource and link to it. You can always send emails to webmasters of similar sites with a simple invitation to visit website. Of course, webmasters have no obligation to review your site or provide an inbound link, nor are you obligated to link back to their site, even if they do provide a link.
This allows you to get links from sites other than directories, which can definitely be better. It is very important to remember that most of the top ranked sites got there because of the valuable content within, thus persuading a large number of other resources to link to them. Writing interesting and informative articles for your web site is a good way of getting these kinds of links.
A strategy for finding potential link partners is to look at who is linking back to your competitors. If these links are from independent Web resources, they can probably post a link to you as well. You can look for pages linking to a certain domain by entering queries using a special syntax in the search boxes of the search engines. For instance, a Google query would look like:
link:www.yourcompetitor.com
This query will list all the sites found in Google’s index that link to www.yourcompetitor.com.
Run the “Who links to me” report on your competitor’s site to see who links to your competitor. Then contact the webmasters of those resources, if you consider it appropriate. Remember no one is obliged to link to you and the only thing you should say in your message is the suggestion that they consider the possibility of linking to your site as a valuable resource for their visitors.
To evaluate each potential link partner, you can use the Google toolbar in combination with the Alexa toolbar. Visit the potential link partner’s site with these two toolbars installed and look at the figures they display. The Google toolbar gives you information about the Page Rank of the site (although you shouldn’t entirely base your decision on this) and the Alexa toolbar will tell you what kind of traffic the potential link partner has. As you remember from the previous lesson, Alexa traffic rank is a reverse indication: the closer to 1 the Alexa Rank is, the more traffic this site receives. However, the graphical presentation works the same way as the Google toolbar: the longer the blue strip, the more traffic. There’s not much sense in getting a link from a low traffic Web site, especially if it has Page Rank lower than 3. By finding out the page rank you will know how much value Google puts into that link.
What not to do
- Do not add your link to a large link list that many webmasters keep on their website and that consists of links only. Actually if a link list consists of more than 30 links, this is considered a link farm. Important search engines like Google recognize it and don’t count these as inbound links. In fact, your rankings can be even damaged as a result.
- Do not decide whether you will link to a website just because of its Google Page Rank. Linking to sites with a high Page Rank means nothing for your own rank; however, if it is a professional resource with valuable content for your visitors, you should definitely link to it!
What you should remember from this article
- The best and most effective way of increasing your search engine rankings is working to improve your web site’s link popularity. This can be achieved by getting as many inbound, one-way links as you can from quality sites such as directories. To get the best quality inbound one-way links, your site needs to provide valuable content, then request a link from similar sites to yours.
- Increasing link popularity is a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating process. Even so, it is definitely worth the time and effort when you see a dramatic increase in traffic.
