Link popularity
Link popularity is a term you'll often hear online among marketers, and for good reason. Google in particular, relies on link
popularity as an important element of page rank. Page rank is another whole and diverse topic, and page rank is not the end all of your success
factor, but it does weigh in heavily.
Submitting your website to the major search engines isn't necessary anymore, and could even slow the process down.
Currently it is better to be found through links by search engine spiders who will follow those links to your website.
This is the first reason to increase link popularity. You need your website found and indexed by the search engines. The next
order of the day is to get lots of links from quality websites, preferably ones that relate to your website. This helps the search engines
determine what your website is about.
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Recent Changes in Linking Strategies
This is not the newest of news about linking, but it is not overwhelming accepted by all online marketers at this point in
time.
Much of SEO is an observe and see what happens situation. Since the major search engines keep much of the criteria they use in
valuing websites a secret, a successful marketer needs to keep in touch with what is happening with websites across the internet,
study carefully and make changes as they arise. And the internet is ever-changing.
Linking between websites on the internet started just as a natural course of events by websites sharing information back and
forth. In it's origins linking was not done with SEO in mind.
At some point the search engines began giving more weight to websites that had more incoming links than others. If you
go to Google now, you will find that they include this as a part of their evaluation process. In their own
words!
Reciprocal linking became very popular and a major part of SEO efforts, to the degree that webmasters acquired hundreds and some
times many thousands of links, many of them unrelated to their content, just to score with the search engines.
Now we seem to be in a catch-22 situation. The search engines created a monster, and they seem to be out to tame it. It would
seem that the search engines are doing a U-turn and wanting to go back to the 'good old days' when links were only exchanged to
give value to site visitors.
The catch-22 is that they still include links as one of their main criteria for valuing websites. For webmasters this creates a
real dilemma! What's a webmaster to do? Those who are making a living online need links to maintain rank and search engine
positioning.
What I see is that rather than posting pages of categorized links one after another, other methods will have to be used. This
will make more work for webmasters because where automation has helped to streamline this process, we may have to go back to
adding links manually and in different ways.
While using automated programs to handle and categorize links is easy and efficient, it is easy for the search engines to
spot.
I say all of this as a disclaimer because I see the winds 'a' changing. This will not all happen overnight. There are millions of
websites and it will take time.
Many of you will make a choice and want to continue using automation, and on the following pages I have overviewed programs that
will do this for you. Just understand that efficiency may have a price down the road.
Here is an informative site if you want to discover more about the changing face of reciprocal linking.
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Link popularity has many definitions, depending on who you listen to. I believe that both anchor text, and the quality of the website linked to
are factors in link popularity.
When you exchange links with other websites consider the anchor text that you use, and make it relevant to your content. Study
up a little on anchor text. Using the right anchor text can benefit you greatly.
To be successful you will need to promote your website in many ways. Reciprocal links are a good place to start and increase
link popularity.. To get your website indexed and develop some page rank, you need links. One way links will come in time, but reciprocal
links are a place to begin. The section on one way links will add ways to increase your link
popularity.
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