Students Of Success

Link popularity has recently become an important aspect to
consider when promoting a website. Many search engines have
started to use link popularity to help determine ranking in
their listings. Gaining links from other sites is also very
beneficial because you gain added traffic when users follow the
link from another site to your site.

What Is Link Popularity? Link popularity is basically the number
and quality of links that point towards your site. A link from a
very important site is worth more than a link from a smaller
site. The search engine companies think that an important site
would only link to your site if your site was important, and it
makes sense too. Try getting the main page of Yahoo! to link to
you and you’ll fail, but if you did get a link, then your site
must be worth something. You couldn’t even get a link to your
site from a medium size site unless your site was important
enough and had something to offer. Both of which are important
aspects in determining relevancy - a search engines main goal.  

The number of links is also important for the same reason. Your
site must be important if many sites link to you. Search engines
know these things, and that is the basis for link popularity.

Linking Strategy Rules

The most basic way of gather and exchanging links is to simply
visit websites and email the webmaster asking for a link
exchange. However, there are a few rules to keep in mind.

1. Related, Not Competitive - You should try to focus your
linking strategy on sites related to yours, but not in direct
competition. For example, a search engine submission company
site wouldn’t want to link with a competitor. They would be
better off linking with a website that teaches various ways of
promotion. The object is not to lose business to competitors,
but to gain business from similar sites.

2. Offer A Link - Most sites won’t just give out a link for
nothing in return. Have a link to their site setup and then
email them asking for an exchange. Even go as far as to give
them the URL of where their link is located. This basically just
makes the offer more serious because you already have a link
setup.

3. Be Selective - You shouldn’t just fire off an email to every
website you find asking for a link exchange. Be selective based
on the importance of your site. If you have a large site that
has been around a while, you can be more selective with your
linking. You just want to be sure that you aren’t wasting your
time with sites that will benefit greatly from your link, but
won’t do much for you at all.

4. Mini Yahoo! - When I created my links page, I had in my mind
a picture of a small directory. Yahoo uses actual people to
decide where and if a site gets added. Although my link page is
obviously much smaller than Yahoo, I try to keep the same idea.
I set up a page with different categories that relate to my
site. This makes your links page professional and also offers
another free service for my visitors to use. They can use my
links page as a targeted directory where they can easily find
specific, relevant information.

Best of luck to you,

JC Anderl www.Redlionbooks.com, JC@Redlionbooks.com

Visit my site or email me if you have any questions about
marketing or website promotion.