Search engine technology has progressed a long way. It used to be
that someone could rank high for a search that had nothing to do
with their site by putting it in their META tags and hiding it in
their page text. Search engines now work hard to fight off these
types of spam. (Unsure of what spam is? See this definition:
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/s/spam.html)
Recently, many search engines have been looking at your link popularity
to determine if your site is (a) a high-quality site and (b) what
the visitor is looking for. One of the more notable search engines
using this method is Google with their PageRank technology. (Read
more about Google's Page Rank technology here:
http://www.google.com/technology)
There are many different ways that link popularity can be measured,
but in general it is determined by how many other websites have
a link to your site. Sites that have a high link popularity themselves
and that are relevant to your site will be more beneficial to have
links from.
What does this mean for you as a web site owner? It means that
you should understand your current link popularity and work to improve
the number of links that come from sites that are relevant to your
site or that target a similar demographic as your site.In order to determine what sites are linking to you and what sites
are linking to your competitors, you can use the following free
online tools:
If there are sites that seem to be ranking higher than yours in
search engines on a consistent basis (for keywords you want to rank
highly for) compare your link popularities. You may find that the
sites that are linking to your competitor would be willing to link
to your site as well.
Methods of Increasing Your Link Popularity
There are many different ways of encouraging others to link to your
site. Here are just a few
- Detailed link instructions page
Place a page on your site that invites others to link to your
site. Provide simple instructions and sample code that shows how
they can easily put this link on their site. Provide a few logos
for them to choose from to download and place on their site along
with your link. You can see an example of this type of page here:
http://www.bwedd.com/guests/downloadlogo.asp
- Submitting all content on your site to search engines -
not just your home page
Many times your listings in search engines count towards your
link popularity, so make sure you submit all of your pages to
search engines -- not just your home page. This can be especially
helpful for pages that have content that will appeal to the internet
public (i.e. "how-to" articles, tips, ideas, etc.)
- Link Trading
A great way to get other sites to link to yours is to offer to
place a link on your site to theirs in return. You need to be
careful to whom you offer this to. It works best with those who
are targeting the same demographic that you are. You need to make
sure that it doesn't decrease the professionalism or quality of
your own site when you add these links to your site.
Link trading is something that can take a lot of work, but be
very beneficial when done correctly. We will be devoting our next
issue to this topic in detail.
Beware - What You Don't Want to Do
Do not use services that offer to increase your link popularity
and simply list your site with tons of others on one page. This
isn't going to do you any good. Search engines are smart enough
to look and see how many other links are on a page. Pages with hundreds
of links don't count for much. Sometimes this is called a Free For
All (FFA) links page and they will ask you for your e-mail address
when you submit your site. Guess what will happen after you submit
your site to a FFA link page? You will end up with a bunch of junk
mail in your e-mailbox. It just isn't worth it. Look into building
links with sites that are relevant to yours and high-quality sites.
Increasing your link popularity is an often unknown method of increasing
your ranking in search engines. Plus, it makes sense that the more
sites that have links to yours, the more chances people have to
find you. In our next issue we will discuss how to increase your
link popularity by trading links with other websites.
If you need assistance in increasing your link popularity please
contact us at 414-425-4069 or
lori@brillianceweb.com
and we would be happy to help.