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Link popularity explained |
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How link popularity can help your rankings A high percentage of #1 ranked Web pages on Google don't contain the queried search term in the body text or in the META tags. How can that be? The answer is: These top ranked Web pages have high link popularity and a good PageRank(tm). In our new series we're going to tell you how to obtain high link popularity and a good PageRank so that your Web pages get a high ranking on Google and other popular search engines. Link Popularity is becoming the
determining factor for successful Web sites. Part 1: What exactly is link popularity? Link popularity refers to the total number of links that a search engine has found for your Web page. The more Web sites link to your Web page, the higher the link popularity of your page. High link popularity contributes to a high search engine ranking. Note that link popularity is measured only for single Web pages, not for the whole Web site. Your Web site can have several Web pages with different PageRank numbers. The idea behind the link popularity concept is simple. The more other Web sites link to your Web site, the more important your site must be. Other sites wouldn't link to your site if there wasn't something interesting on your site or if your Web site didn't contain any special content. It's nearly impossible to manipulate link popularity. Previous ranking algorithms that took META keywords or similar factors into account have been quickly abused to mislead the search engines. On the other side, it's very difficult to manipulate the number of links that point to a site. That's why link popularity is now one of the most important factors for search engines when they rank a Web page. However, you cannot get high link popularity by submitting your Web site to thousands of FFA (free for all) link pages. Not all links are considered equal by the search engines. It does matter who links to you and how they link to you. You can find more information on this important fact in the next issue of our newsletter. Recommended link popularity tools:
As mentioned in the last issue of our newsletter, the more Web sites link to your Web site, the higher your link popularity. However, not all links are equal. Some links count more than others. Links from important Web sites have a greater effect on your link popularity and your search engine rankings. A link from www.Yahoo.com to your Web site has more weight than a link from a small private Web page. A link from a Web site with high link popularity is better than a link from an unknown Web site. It's also important that the Web site that's linking to you has a similar topic as your Web site. Imagine that you sell shoes on your Web site. A link from another Web site that is all about shoes will count much more than a link from a Web site that links to all kind of Web sites. Finally, it's important how the link to your site looks like. For example, one of your important keywords might be "brown leather shoes". The link <a href="http://www.domain.com">Brown leather shoes</a> leads to much better search engine rankings for the keyword "brown leather shoes" than the following link <a href="http://www.domain.com">Smith and Partners</a> By the way, many people think that they can increase their link popularity by submitting their Web site address to FFA (free for all) link pages and link farms (Web sites that link to all kind of Web sites). This doesn't work. More and more search engines recognize FFA pages and link farms and choose to ignore these pages. Usually, submissions to FFA pages are a waste of time that only results in many spam email messages. In addition, you should avoid services that promise you 2000 links to your site within a week or so. If they link to you at all, these 2000 links must be of poor quality or they don't have a similar topic as your Web site. Use common sense. Offers that sound too good to be true probably aren't true. Summary:
Next week, we're going to tell you how to find good potential link partners quickly and easily. Recommended link popularity tools:
Part 3: How to find good potential link partners As explained in the last issues of our newsletter, it's important _who_ links to your site. Web sites that have a similar topic as your site are more important than Web sites with different topics. In addition, if you can convince Web sites with a similar topic to link to your site, you'll also get targeted traffic from these sites. People who visit your topic partner sites are usually interested in what you have to offer. They are more likely to come to your site and to buy something. It's the quality of the traffic that counts, not the quantity.
But how do you find good potential links
partners? There are several ways:
Unfortunately, both ways are very time-consuming and it's hard to do it for many sites. Instead of manually searching for good potential link partners, you could also use a software tool like ARELIS to save time . ARELIS is a commercial tool that quickly finds sites that link to your competitors as well as other potential link partners. It presents the found sites in a clearly arranged list that can be sorted by different criteria. It even helps you to build link pages and to check for broken links. You can download a demo version here . In the next issue we'll explain how to contact potential link partners so that you'll get a positive reply. In addition to ARELIS, we recommend the free
link popularity tool "
Link Popularity Check ". It checks and
compares your link popularity on different
search engines. Part 4: How to contact potential link partners In part 3, we told you how to find good potential link partners. When you've found such high quality sites, it's important that you use the right words to contact the webmasters of these sites. If you want them to link to your Web site, you have to be personal and politely. Emails like the following usually do NOT work: ---snip--- Many webmasters consider sending such messages as spamming. It's much more effective to use personalized email messages. They'll improve the chances of your link request message being read and acted upon favorably. If you want positive feedback, you must convince the webmaster that you've really visited the Web site and that you know what the site is about. Try to convince them that your Web site is related to their site and make it easy for potential link partners to link back to your site. Here's an example: ---snip--- As you can see, we've already linked to the other site before asking them for a reciprocal link. If you've already linked to a site, the webmaster is much more likely to answer your request. This sounds like a very time consuming task. Fortunately, there are tools that help you with that. If you use ARELIS, a software program to manage reciprocal links, you can quickly visit and contact potential link partners. ARELIS lets you preview a Web site and offers
a built-in email client that helps you to
contact potential link partners quickly and
easily. You can use email templates that use
variables so that you can create email messages However, ARELIS is not a spamming tool because it only lists relevant Web sites and you must visit every Web site before contacting it. Just how a serious webmaster would do it and what brings the best results. In addition, ARELIS automatically creates and manages your link pages for you so that you can quickly add, edit and remove link partners from your Web pages. You can download a free demo version here: Next week, we'll discuss what you can do to increase the success of your linking campaign. In addition to ARELIS, we recommend the free
link popularity tool "
Link Popularity Check". It checks and
compares your link popularity on different
search engines. Part 5: How to increase the success of your campaign Until now, you've learned how to locate good potential link partners. In addition, you know which Web sites and services you should avoid if you want to obtain a good and long lasting link popularity. You've also learned how to contact potential link partner sites and that a personal approach gets much better results than mass emailing sites. Here are a few other important tips to increase the success of your linking campaign:
Conclusion Building a good link popularity requires some work but the results will pay for it. Link popularity is already the most important factor for search engines to rank Web sites. The sooner you start with your linking campaign, the better the results for your business. Professional webmaster tools like ARELIS can help you in your linking campaign. They get very good results with little work. Recommended link popularity tools:
Other special articles:
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