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.

Part 2: Not all links are considered equal
As mentioned above, 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 http://webdesignerhouston.com 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

Brown leather shoes

leads to much better search engine rankings for the keyword "brown leather shoes" than the following link

Smith and Partners

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.

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