Last Update: Tuesday, January 18, 2005.
In this article I show you how to improve your
link popularity with internal, incoming & outgoing links, which will in
turn improve your search engine rankings.
Link popularity, which refers to the number of
links pointing to and from related sites, is considered by many search engine
experts as the most important element of a site's relevance in search engines.
If you're not sure what your site's link
popularity rating is, then use this link popularity
check tool to check your link popularity rating in the top search engines.
There are three types of links that will increase
the link popularity of your site; internal, incoming and outgoing links.
1. Internal Links
Internal link popularity refers to the number of
links to and from pages within a site.
Make sure you cross link your important related
pages back and forth. By doing so, you are telling search engine spiders that
those are the most important pages of your site.
Cross linking your pages also helps the search
engine spiders find and index your most important pages quicker, especially if
some pages are buried deep within your site.
2. Incoming Links
Incoming link popularity refers to links pointing
to a site from other related sites. In addition, there are two types of
incoming links:
i.
Find Sites That Link To Your Competition
Did you know that search
engines can tell you which sites link to your competition? To find out, visit
your favorite search engine and enter, "link:"
followed by the competitors domain name (with and without "www").
For example, "link:theirdomain.com" and "link:www.theirdomain.com."
(Quotation marks not required)
To check the link
popularity of your own sites, simply replace "theirdomain.com" with
your own domain names.
ii.
Find Link Partners In Web Directories
Do not forget that all
the sites listed in the same category as yours in the major web site
directories, such as Yahoo!, LookSmart and the Open Directory Project, are
ideal link candidates too.
Once you have compiled a
list of related sites, add a link to them in your site. Then send an email to
each site owner informing them that you have linked to their site and politely
ask them for a link back to your site. Don't forget to tell them about the
benefits of exchanging links in this manner.
iii.
Find Sites That Accept Site Submissions
Another way of finding
sites to link to yours is to find sites that accept site submissions. To find
such sites, visit a search engine, such as Google, and search for:
"add
url" "your keywords"
Replace "your
keywords" with those related to your site. Include the quotation marks to
ensure the search engine only return pages with the exact search phrases you
enter.
Also try replacing,
"add url" with one of the following sets of 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.
In addition, you can also
find site submission pages by searching for the actual page. So, try replacing
the "add url" search phrase with one of the following page names:
addurl.html,
addsite.html, addlink.html, addaurl.html, addasite.html, addalink.html,
submiturl.html, submitsite.html, submitlink.html, submitaurl.html,
submitasite.html, submitalink.
add-url.html, add-site.html, add-link.html, add-a-url.html,
add-a-site.html, add-a-link.html, submit-url.html, submit-site.html, submit-link.html,
submit-a-url.html, submit-a-site.html, submit-a-link.
add_url.html, add_site.html, add_link.html, add_a_url.html,
add_a_site.html, add_a_link.html, submit_url.html, submit_site.html,
submit_link.html, submit_a_url.html, submit_a_site.html, submit_a_link.
You
could also try replacing the ".html"
extension with others, such as ".htm,"
".shtml," ".cfm," etc.
3. Outgoing Links
Outgoing links refers to links pointing to other
related sites from your site.
Search engine spiders will crawl your site's outgoing
links and determine that the content of the sites you link to are related to
the content of your own site.
Search engines like sites that link to related
content, especially "authoritative hubs" that other sites
"suggest" (i.e. link to) as a reference for information on a
particular topic.
Link Keywords
It is important to name your internal and outgoing
links carefully. Since keywords are important in determining the relevancy of a
page, it is essential that they are used throughout a page.
The page title, headers and links should always
include the keywords describing the page.
Therefore, I suggest that you always name a page
using the keywords relevant to the page. In turn, the visible link text used on
other pages to link to the page should use the same keyword phrase as the page
name.
For example, if the title of a page is "Link Popularity." Then the
page name should be "link-popularity.html,"
or "link_popularity.html."
Make sure you include a hypen or underscore
between each word. This will ensure that search engines index each word as a
separate keyword. There's no difference to using a hypen or underscore.
Do not pack all the words together. For example,
"linkpopularity.html."
You should also make sure that all links to that
page use the link text, "Link Popularity."
You notice how everything fits together?
Link Quality
Studies have shown that the quality of the links
is just as important as the number of links to your site.
The types of sites you should concentrate on
getting links from include major search engines (Google), popular web portals
(MSN), web directories (Yahoo! and the Open Directory Project), high trafficked
sites (eBay and Amazon), news sites (CNN), weblogs, and sites related to your
site's topic.
Search engines consider links from major search
engines and web portals as big votes of confidence for your site.
Incoming Links Mistaken
As Link Popularity Boosters
There are two types of incoming links that some
people mistake as links that will boost their link popularity;
Such links never link directly to your site, so
they will not help your link popularity rating. These types of links actually
point to their own site, which then redirects the visitor to the correct site.
They are used for tracking purposes.
However, if you host the affiliate program
software on your own server and the affiliate tracking links point to your web
site, then those links will count towards your site's link popularity.
Link Exchanges And Farms
A word of warning! Never ever use links from link
exchange sites and link farms.
Link farms are networks of heavily cross linked
pages on one or more web sites, with the sole intention of improving the link
popularity of those pages and sites.
Many of the top search engines consider such links
as spam, so stay clear of these types of links.
Conclusion
Do not underestimate the influence link popularity
plays in the ranking of your web pages. It is actually possible to achieve top
rankings almost entirely on link popularity alone. So, spend time improving
your site's link popularity.
If you want to save time and effort, I recommend
using a link finder and management tool, such as Arelis.
Good luck with improving your link popularity!
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About The Author: Michael Wong is a respected