Why is Link Popularity Important?
Link popularity is becoming one of the most
significant factors in determining how well a site ranks.
Search engines are continually motivated to provide relevant
search results for each search query.
Traditionally, search engines based their
rankings chiefly on what was found within a page or site.
Search engine rankings for keyword queries were initially
based on the metadata and title within a page. Due to the
misuse of metadata principles search engines have started
to give more credence to off page criteria – namely link popularity
and link reputation.
What is Link Popularity?
The foundation of link popularity is the
number of links a search engine detects pointing to a particular
site. The more popular the site, the more likely the site
is to have quality content. Quality sites are more likely
to have content rich pages, allowing the search engine to
provide quality results to the search engine results pages.
Search engines give a higher ranking in their search results
to pages that come from a site with high link popularity.
How does Link Popularity
Affect Traffic?
Link popularity is a recognized way to boost
targeted traffic. A web page is deemed more important when
many other pages link to it. A link is a vote cast by one
page for another. But votes are not equal. A vote from a page
that benefits from high link popularity transmits a greater
weighted value than a page with lower link popularity.
Link popularity is a building block of search
engine ranking criteria that when incorporated with on-page
optimization factors will influence ranking position in the
search results. When links are reinforced with importance
to the user and relevant relationship to the receiving page,
they have a greater sway on search engine ranking potential.
Link popularity is measured by a complex
set of calculations to determine weighted values of incoming
links that are not only based upon “page importance” but link
reputation as well which is the contextual relationship of
the linked pages.
How Does Link Popularity
Affect Site Rankings?
A link popularity score alone won't determine
a page’s rank, but search engines increasingly use it to score
pages because it is considered a sign of a high quality site:
one site won't link to another site for no reason, so a site
with an immense amount of external links must contain meaningful
content.
All search engines use different algorithms
to rank sites, but most of the major ones consider link popularity
in some form. Google uses link popularity almost exclusively
to rank sites. Because Google provides content for other major
players, a high ranking may help a site in other major search
engines as well.
Many links to a site can also improve search
engine ranking by keeping a site in the search engines. As
more sites are linked, the odds increase that search engine
spiders will encounter the site repeatedly and be less likely
to leave it out of their databases.
Link Popularity Pitfalls
Because of the importance of link popularity
there have been many cases of misuse. There are elements to
be wary of when it comes to embarking on a linking campaign
to boost a website’s link popularity. The following is a list
of some linking pitfalls:
- FFA
- Link Farms
- Bad Neighbourhoods/Dirty IP’s
- Banned Sites
- Penalized Sites
- Accumulation of links too quickly/False
Inflation
- Independent
Back Linking Network
|
