Link Popularity history

To gain a better understanding of link popularity it is useful to know why it became so crucial for search engine rankings. In past a web page's ranking was determined, amongst other factors, by number of keyword occurences within 'on-page' elements i.e. in page text, META tags, title tag. When web developers learned that they could trick a search engine to return their web pages by cramming keywords into their pages search engines had to get a bit smarter. They were using 'on-page' elements to determine relevance so it was only natural that they would look to elements out of direct control of web page creator i.e. 'off-page' elements. Search engines made assumption that greater number of links from other sites pointing to a web site, more popular web site is and therefore a more quality resource. This worked nicely in theory but in practice it was also to be abused.

Web site owners figured out many ways to get links pointing to their web sites one example of which was through use of link farms, pages contained nothing more than a collection of links, Quantity of links was being abused so search engines made use of old saying "quality not quantity" and began to assign a quality factor to each of links pointing to a web site. Now web sites that had a higher number of high quality links were looked upon favourably by search engines. Building link popularity became a science in itself and today is still most time-consuming and frustrating activity for a search engine optimizer.

Main classes of links

Note: In following examples SiteA is our web site and SiteB is an outside site (i.e. a web site under a different domain name than SiteA).

Inbound links:

Inbound links to a web site are links that originate from an outside web site. An example would be a link on SiteB pointing into a page on SiteA.

SiteA (----- SiteB

Outbound links:

Outbound links from a web site are links pointing to a page on an outside web site. An example would be a link on SiteA pointing out to a page on SiteB.

SiteA -----) SiteB

There are two further classifications of links:

Reciprocal links:

An example of a reciprocal link is when SiteA links to SiteB AND SiteB links to SiteA, link is reciprocated by both parties.

SiteA -----) SiteB

AND

SiteA (----- SiteB

To achieve a high link popularity type of links to build are inbound one-way links. This simulates how natural links are created i.e. links that people create to point to your site because they found it worth linking to.

There are a few different elements you need to think about when first putting up your new web site. Starting with basics and building from there is best way to go. Optimizing your web site and getting it ready for Internet World to see is what you need to concentrate on first. Here are a few helpful hints to get you on your way to success.

When optimizing your web site and making sure it is ready for search engines to crawl frequently, there are a few key areas that you need to pay attention to. The three main fundamentals for creating successful search engine optimization are Link popularity, Meta tag creation and optimizing your web site. We will specifically concentrate on creating meta tags to help optimize any web site.

What is a Meta Tag?

A meta tag can be found in "html code" within a web page. Each meta tag is used by search engines to determine what your web pages are about. The meta tag Information provides "essential guts" of your website page. Your Web site "Title and Description" Tags are an essential part of this meta tag creation. The "Title, Description and Headline" Tags can be first thing any web searcher will see when they do a search on internet.

Since first impressions are everything, importance on making "the Title, Description and Headline" meta tags readable, relevant, attractive and properly optimized are absolutely essential. The true key is not to over optimize because you are likely to be banned entirely from search engines if you choose to do so.

What happens when search engines crawl your web site?