- The Forgotten Tactic for Achieving High Search
Engine Rankings
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What is Link Popularity?
In simple terms, link popularity is the measurement of how many websites are linked to your website. Developed by Google years ago, link popularity (a.k.a. PageRank) is a measurement now used by almost every major search engine to help rank each page of your website against all other content-related pages on the Web. Further, link popularity is arguably the single most important factor to achieving prominent search engine rankings in Google. - The premise behind this measurement is this:
- Every site that links to your site acts as a vote for your site; the more votes your site has the better it must be; therefore, the higher it should be in search engine rankings.
- In addition, there is some debate as to whether search engines give more weight to any links coming from more “popular” websites. It has been our experience that this is happening. For example, it is likely true that one link from a popular site like IBM.com or HP.com will have a more notable impact on your search engine rankings than 20 links from small mom-and-pop type websites.
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Why is Link Popularity Important?
Developing quality inbound links is critical for high search engine rankings. But it also has a positive effect on the amount of targeted traffic – visitors who click through – driven to your site from industry resource websites. Think of it this way: a key business development method that most “brick & mortar” businesses use to get the word out about their products and/or services is networking in the business community. This holds true for a website as well, but networking is accomplished through link building – by creating links on other sites that point to your site. For instance, by acquiring a listing for your site on an industry-related resource site – and perhaps even within their products and services vendor directory section – your site will be able to capture additional users who are, at that moment, browsing through the vendor directory looking for products and services such as those you offer. These visitors tend to be relatively well qualified prospects compared to casual visitors to your website. -
How to Check Your Link Popularity
Have you ever wondered why the website of one of your competitors always seems to show up on the first page of Google results while your site struggles to get on the second or third? Most likely your competitor has many more links pointing to their site than you have – thus, higher link popularity. To check on this, type in: -
- "link:www.your_site.com" into the google.com search window
- or…"link:www.your_competitors_site.com"
- now, look at the top right of the screen in the blue bar, as in the example below:
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Learn From Your Competitor’s Link Popularity
The number that Google displays is not 100% accurate – there are likely more links than are shown. However, you can still determine a general idea of whether your site has more links pointing to it than your competitors’ sites. And when you perform a link popularity search on your competitors, you can review their results, possibly gaining important insights into links you may wish to consider for your own site. -
Acquiring a Link
If your research into competitors’ sites reveals a resource site that seems to be a fit for your own business, you will simply need to look around that site to find information about how to add a link (a.k.a. add a listing) to your site. Some websites will offer a link to your site for free, while others require a small annual fee. If there is a fee, you will need to make a judgment call as to whether the site looks professional, respected and well-traveled by your target audience – if so, it may be well worth a small annual fee. -
Another Way to Find Good Links
Besides doing link research on your competitors and using that information to locate websites appropriate for linking to your own site, here is another easy method to go about locating appropriate sites to link from: -
- In Google, MSN and Yahoo, type in any of the various keyphrases that are important to your business. Be sure to use all three engines, as you will get different results in each. As you did for your competitors’ results, review these search engine results, looking for any resource (non-corporate) websites. You can typically quickly tell whether the site is a company selling products or a resource website by simply looking at the URL within the results listing (see example below).
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The Bottom Line
Being successful on the Internet generally means having people find your website, and for people to find it, it has to be “visible” in the major search engines, directories and industry-related websites. And, while search engine optimization and other site promotion tactics can get you far, they can fall short on getting your site to the first page of search engine results for your most important search phrases. By building up your link popularity, you can greatly increase your chances of achieving strong rankings in search results for your business’ primary keywords and phrases. -
MKTX’s Link Popularity Services
MKTX has over six years experience in building link popularity programs for our clients. We are also experts at site optimization and other site promotion tactics, as well as information architecture and website design. By taking advantage of MKTX’s integrated web development and Internet marketing services, you can be assured that your site's visibility – and thus the amount of targeted traffic – will increase significantly, as will your revenue from Internet-based activities.
