Website link building to increase link popularity is very influential in determining how well a website will perform within the major search engines. A website’s link popularity is computed from the number and quality of links leading back to the website.
The History of Link Popularity
It is critical to understand link popularity and why it is so important within search engine rankings. In the past, a web page ranking was determined by the number of keywords placed upon the website within the “on-page” elements in page text, title tag and 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 today are much wiser. 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 be 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 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 a website. The major search engines looked upon websites, which had a higher number of quality incoming links favorably. Link building has became very important and is still today the most time-consuming activity for any search engine optimizer.
Classes of Links
- Inbound links – Inbound links to a website are links which originate from an outside website. A good example of this would be a link on Site B pointing to a page on your website.
- Outbound links – These are links from a website pointing to a page on another website. An 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 Site A links to Site B and Site links to Site A. Both parties reciprocate the link.
To achieve high link popularity on your website, the types of links you should focus on building are inbound one-way links. Keep outbound links to a minimum as they may decrease the link popularity of your website. Reciprocal links can add to your link popularity, but they are not as powerful as inbound, one-way links.
Building Links
To increase link popularity, many inbound one-way links need to be created. This can be performed in a number of different ways including social bookmarking, directory submissions, article marketing, and organic traffic from your sites keyword rich content pages. The best way to increase 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 by having unique, informative content on your website, while at the same time requesting links from other websites with a theme similar to yours.
