Link Popularity as a Search Engine Marketing Strategy
Posted on | November 1, 2008 | No Comments
Building link popularity as a search engine marketing strategy has become more and more important over the years. In fact, many search engine experts believe that a solid link popularity strategy can literally make or break a site with the search engines.
Why Building Link Popularity is a Difficult Task
Life would be simple if you could just search out zillions of web sites and get them all to link to you. But if you want to use link popularity to move up the search engine rankings, the task is actually much more difficult. That’s because the engines only want high quality, related in-bound and out-bound links. Link farming and huge link exchange program techniques are dead. Why? Because if you use these techniques, you could find your sites blacklisted in the search engines quickly.
Does this mean having to link to your higher ranking competitors? Certainly not. You simply need to link out to, and receive reciprocal links back from, sites that share the same focus as your site.
Search Engines Want Information Communities
When building your link popularity, you need to start thinking in terms of “Information Communities” because these are what search engines are hoping to build. Why? Think of the problem from the search engine’s perspective. What would help raise search engine customer satisfaction? Answer: relevant listing to the search query. Sure, but take it one step farther. What if the top listed website in any directory also contained links to other important information-rich websites within the same topic area? That would build an Information Community and with one click from the search engine, the search engine user would find page after page of information relevant to their search query. That’s going to lead to one happy search engine user and thus a happy search engine.
Where Did Search Engines Pick Up This Link Popularity Technique?
Ever read a scientific paper? If not, go to your local college or university library and take a peek. At the end of any scientific paper you’ll find a list of references that (you guessed it) refers to a whole bunch of other papers on the same topic. This creates an instant Information Community. One paper leads to many so that any interested party can quickly learn more about the topic at hand. This is link popularity at work people. Learn from it. Emulate it. And watch your site rise in the rankings.
Out-Bound Links: Only Half of the Link Popularity Story
Okay, so now that you understand what kind of links the search engines are looking for, you can begin to build your link popularity by linking out to similarly focused, high quality pages. But how do you receive high-quality links in return?
First, let’s deal with finding those high-quality pages you’d like to have link to you. If you go to the major search engines and search for your target keywords, the search engine will return a list of results the top of which the search engines themselves are telling you are good. These are the pages you’d like to have link to you (provided they are non-competitor sites) as links from these pages are important to the search engine. And if you can create an Information Community of pages the search engine considers important, you’ll be well on your way to high rankings.
But how do you get those pages to link back to you? The oldest and best-known method is to e-mail or contact by phone the Webmaster of the sites you’d like to receive a link from. In this conversation, you outline the benefits of linking to your site, including the fact that you have created your own high-quality, information-rich content that may be of interest to their visitors. Next, tell them that you have already included their link on your website and that you’d be glad to leave it there if they’ll add a link to you in return. Now’s the time to butter them up a little bit by showing them that you have taken the time to look over their site, that you like it a lot, and that you already have a page in mind where your link would be appropriate. Presuming they say yes, you will have successfully exchanges links and completed both sides of your link popularity strategy.
Could You Improve Your Link Popularity by Linking Back To Us?
While most search engines use the content of webpages as one factor in determining if a site is relevant to a search request, a more important factor to many search engines is the content and number of pages that link to it. Search engines strive for relevancy. To do this, they have to review the content of a website and evaluate the people who are linking to it. Linking back helps to contribute to increasing the quality of your content and your relevance in the major search engines. Together we are stronger! Visit the Link-To-Us page for details and link code!
Link Popularity Resources:
- Measuring Link Popularity
- Link Popularity Check
- 131 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies
- Search Engine Link Popularity
- Link Popularity and the Myth of the Guestbook Link
- Ten Things You Need To Know About Linking and Link Popularity
- Definition of Link Popularity
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