Link PopularityLink popularity is simply
total number of web pages that link to your web page. Link popularity is an extremely important factor that is used by most of major search engines to rank web pages and web sites. In general, major search engines consider link popularity a key factor in their algorithms to determine relevancy of your web page to a particular keyword search query.
Good link popularity is important because it can increase 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 site’s link popularity. Your web page rank (i.e., position your web page occupies in a search engine’s results page) to a particular search query can be improved by increasing 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 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 level of a single high quality incoming link.
The major search engines do more than match content of your web page to keyword search query to determine if there’s a good match for a particular search. They look at quality of links to your web page. The reason is because there are thousands, if not millions, of web pages that contain search query’s particular keyword or keyword phrase in 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 link popularity, search engines also look at anchor text contained in incoming link to your web page. It will consider your web page more relevant to keyword query search if text in incoming link to your web page contains 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 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 visitor traffic to your web page. Spend necessary time and energy to locate and exchange links with link exchange partners that provide a good match with your web page. Review 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.
