Link Popularity – Google Page Rank - A Review by Nakul Goyal [SEO,
SEP, SEM] Professional
Link popularity is a term much talked about but little understood in
terms of its relevance and importance. It’s not easy locating quality
sites related to but not competing with yours who are willing to give up
valuable real estate for your link. It takes solid research; smooth
negotiating skills and a large investment of time to develop a base of
reputable, relevant link partners that will make the search bots take
notice of your website.
Major search engines consider link popularity as one of the key
factors in ranking a website. At least one major engine even claims they
won't index sites that don't have at least one link pointing to them
from another site. Many online marketing specialists believe that link
popularity is simply obtaining as many links as possible. However, the
quality of the link holds more weight than the quantity of links. You
will get better results in the search engines if you have link
popularity from sites that have considerable traffic.
Obtaining links from other web sites is not enough to obtain
long-term results on both the search engines and directories. People
have to actually click on those links to your web site and browse your
web site. More importantly they need to return to your web site when
they see the quality content, products, and/or services that you offer,
i.e. the usability of your web site.
As the importance of linking grew people began to look for short-cuts
to link popularity. There’s a right and a wrong way to create backlinks,
and short-cuts to link popularity can cause severe trouble for a website
to be ranked. One solid example of this type of short-cut is the use of
link farms that provide hundreds of irrelevant links. Link farm is a
network of sites that link to other sites for the sole purpose of
increasing their link popularity. Your website gets hundreds of links to
your site from all unrelated sites and in return, you must link to
hundreds of other unrelated sites. Google terms it as spamming and
removes sites from its index related with link farms.
Therefore link popularity should be developed the right way and in
the right direction. Your website should link to information that
interests your visitors and increase their knowledge in topics related
to your business. Many webmasters ignore this very rewarding process
because of shortage of time because they just don’t have the time.
Having another site linked to yours is almost vital when it comes to
getting your site indexed.
A growing number of search engines use link popularity in their
ranking algorithms. Google uses it as its most important factor in
ranking sites. HotBot, AltaVista, MSN, Inktomi, and others also use link
popularity in their formulas. Eventually every major engine will use
link popularity, so developing and maintaining it are essential to your
search engine placement.
Link popularity can do a lot for your site. Not only will many search
engines rank you higher, but links from other sites will also drive more
traffic to you. Link popularity is much more than a measure of how many
links point to a site. Search engines use far more sophisticated
formulas to gauge how popular sites are. In general, however, link
popularity is measured by the following factors:
1. Number of Links - The more, the better. Although lots of
irrelevant links are less effective than a few relevant ones, they're
better than nothing. Inktomi, a company that provides search results to
engines like HotBot, still values the number of links more than anything
else.
2. Link text - The text used to describe a link can also affect your
rankings. These three links all point to the same URL but use different
text:
Yourwebsite.com Your Keywords Click here
Search engines' spiders figure that any words other sites use to
describe your site are particularly relevant. So, if lots of sites
linking to you use keywords in their link text, search engines will
boost your ranking for those keywords.
Also make sure that they are NOT FFA links, Guestbook Links, Link
Farms...100% genuine HTML links. NO JavaScript type links, No hidden
links. Link popularity is important because it is a major factor in high
Google™ rankings. Link popularity will continue to be an essential
factor in top search engine rankings for the foreseeable future. Florida
has brought in a lot of changes but what I feel is that there never was
a single factor driving rankings in the SERPS and Search Engine
Algorithms change with the pace of time to tackle Search Engine Spamming
issues and Florida was one of those updates.
Kindly note that the words above are not biased for any reason and
they are my views in general; I do not directly or indirectly point
towards any company or individual related in any way whatsoever with the
Florida Update. All trademarks are owned by their respective companies.
If you have any questions, doubts, updates for me, feel free to contact
me and pass the information over. Read more about Florida in my Florida
article........!! Feel free to email me with any questions or updates or
anything else that you would like to share with me!
