Link popularity is very influential in determining how well a business website will perform within the major search engine rankings. A web site’s link popularity is computed from a number and most importantly, the quality of links leading back to a business website.
The history of link popularity
It is very useful to understand about link popularity and why it is so important within search engine rankings. In the past, a business web page ranking was determined by the number of keywords placed upon the website within “on-page” elements in page text, title tags or META tags.
Web developers soon learned that they could trick search engines to divert traffic to their websites by cramming keywords onto their pages. The search engines have wised up since then. Search engines assumed that the greater the number of links from other websites pointing to a particular website, the more popular the website was and must have been a more quality resource. This worked great in the beginning but it was also often abused.
Website owners figured out other ways to get links pointing to their business websites through link farms. These pages contained nothing more than collections of links. Quality of links was being abused so the search engines began to assign quality factors to links pointing to websites. The major search engines looked upon Websites, which had a higher number of high quality links, favorably. Link popularity became very important and is still today the most time-consuming activity for a search engine optimizer.
Classes of links
- Inbound links – Inbound links to a business website are links, which originate from an outside website. A good example of this would be a link on Site B pointing into a page on SiteA.
- Outbound links – These are links from a website pointing to a page on an outside website. A good example of this would be a link on SiteA pointing out to a page on SiteB.
- Reciprocal links – An example of a reciprocal link is when SiteA links to SiteB and SiteB links to SiteA. Both parties reciprocate the link.
To achieve high link popularity on your business website, the types of links you should build are inbound one-way links. For outbound links, they might decrease link popularity of your website. They also do not add to your link popularity. Reciprocal links can add to your link popularity. They are not as powerful as inbound, one-way links. They are often artificial in nature and created by communication between the owners of both websites.
Building link popularity
To build up link popularity, many inbound one-way links need to be created. This can be performed in a number of different ways with directories and great site content. Do not forget to email website owners.
The best way of increasing your search engine rankings is working to improve your website’s link popularity. This can be achieved by getting as many inbound, one-way links as possible and having great content on your website while requesting links from other website.
