Link Popularity
Link Popularity
Increasing Link Popularity
Search engines are the gateway to the Internet; they are the
first tool that potential customers use to find the products and
services they need. This is why link popularity is so
imperative. If the customers do not find your website, you have
no possibilities of making any sales.
You’re probably wondering what the blazes is popular about a
link! Well, in a word – plenty! Link popularity refers to the
ranking assigned to your website by the search engines, and it
determines the ranking your page gets when keywords are entered
into a search engine. So, you’re probably wondering, how do I
make my link popular?
Search engines are discretionary, giving status and ranking to
sites that have links to their pages from related, quality
sites. It’s a simple formula, but a very important one. Google
created the system, and now virtually all the most popular
search engines employ it to rank your web pages in their indexes.
The more commonly used your keyword is, the harder it will be to
achieve link popularity, but without achieving this step, it is
almost certain your site will never rank highly on any search
engine. But don’t be discouraged; there are tried and true ways
of achieving link popularity using the most competitive keywords.
There are a few things you should be aware of. The first is that
just linking up with a large number of other websites will not
achieve link popularity. In fact, it may have quite the opposite
effect. This is particularly true when pertaining to websites
that are nothing more than “link farms” – pages containing line
after line of indiscriminate links. Search engines may
aggressively discriminate against your website if you are
associated with a link farm, so steer clear of them!
The next thing to bear in mind is the quality of the site you
are linking to. Never link to a page you have reservations about
your visitors seeing. The last thing you want your website to
appear as is indiscriminate and cheap. Linking to sites of poor
quality will only lessen your link popularity, if not completely
destroy it.
So let’s get to what you need to do to achieve supreme link
popularity and improve your rankings to stellar status on all
the popular search engines.
The first step, and the fastest way to get your foot in the
door, is to get a listing in a popular directory, such as Open
Directory Project and Yahoo. If your site is business-related,
you will want to be listed on Yahoo, and despite the fact that
it will cost you around $300 a year, it will be money well
spent. If your site is non-commercial, the listing will be free,
but it will take time and follow-up to actually get it listed.
Open Directory is gives you a free listing whether you are
business-related or non-commercial, but be prepared to make a
lot of follow-up inquiries before you see your site listed.
You are aiming to get listed in the highest level of appropriate
category, and this just takes some common sense. For example, if
your company ships Alpaca wool from an Alpaca farm located in
the middle of Nowhere, Tiny State, do NOT submit your listing to
“Retailers from Nowhere, Tiny State.” BIG MISTAKE! All you have
to do is look a little deeper – and submit your listing to the
“Fine Alpaca Wool” category. You will not only associate
yourself with culture and quality, but you will be listed in a
national category.
The next step after you have attained directory listings is to
locate other quality sites that will increase your link
popularity. Try to find sites that are in some way related to
yours, so not only will your link popularity increase, but your
customer base may also be expanded. You want to avoid your
competitors and look for sites that are useful to your site’s
visitors. Let’s look at the Alpaca Wool site example. Linking up
to a site that sells knitting supplies would be helpful to your
visitors, and the chances of the knitting supply site wanting to
link up to your site are also greater. By linking to a related
site that will be relevant to your website’s traffic, you are
increasing both of your site’s business prospects – and both of
your sites’ link popularity.
Not all sites want to link to other sites, so you will have to
do some research when you are looking for possible linking
partners. Google is an excellent starting place for your search.
Make sure you enter keywords that you think quality customers
will also enter to find your own site. Remember, your criteria
are quality, highly ranked, non-competing websites that have a
links or resources page. Go to these sites and objectively
assess them. Look at the quality of the product, the graphics,
and the ease of use. Then check out the other sites they are
linked to, and determine if your own site would fit in with the
crowd.
When you decide you have found a good prospect, you must set out
to woo them. The first thing to do is to add a link on your own
links page to their site. This is an essential first step; it
shows good faith, and ups your chances significantly of their
reciprocity. After you have added their link, you must contact
the webmaster of their site. Since this is almost always done by
email, you want to make sure it is immediately clear that your
message is not junk mail. This requires that you tell them right
off the bat that you have added a link to their page on your
site. A hook like this almost always insures the reader will
read on.
Next, be sure to be flattering and let them know how much you
appreciate their website. Make sure you emphasize that you have
actually visited their site, and that their site is not just a
random pick. Give them the address of your links page, and ask
them to check out the link for themselves. It’s a good idea to
mention that they will not only benefit from the increased
traffic your website will direct their way, but you will also
increase their link popularity. Briefly, explain why link
popularity is so essential, but do this in a sentence or two so
you don’t sound like a professor! Finally, tell them you would
greatly appreciate if they would reciprocally add a link on
their own links page to your website.
Go through this process with as many appropriate sites as you
can find, bearing in mind the criteria of quality and
non-competitiveness. After you have emailed all relevant sites,
be sure to check these website frequently to see if they have
added a link to your page. Give it about a month, and if no link
appears, try another charming email. Then give it another month,
and if your site is still absent from their links page, it’s
time to remove their link from your own links page. The only
time you want to pursue a link further than this is if you
believe a site is crucial to your link popularity and your
business needs. Just remember to keep all your communications
complimentary and cordial.
Then set up a schedule to check your ranking in search engines
frequently to see if your link popularity has improved. This is
not achievable in the blink of an eye. It will take some time
and a good deal of work. There is no way around the
labor-intensive quality of improving your link popularity, which
is why search engines regard it with such importance.
By the way – make sure you have a beautiful, streamlined site or
you will never persuade anyone to link up to you. Be prepared to
keep plugging away at this process, as long as it takes, until
you achieve link popularity stardom
About the Author
Rayzee is the Founder of Rayzee International, a small
home-based business that enjoys considerable success in website
and niche marketing. Search Engine Optimization is the key to
Free Traffic. Get a copy of “SEO Made Easy” here:
http://rayzee.co.uk/SEO-Made-Easy.html
How can I increase website traffic?
Hello!
I have a site and am listed at many directorys, articles, search engines and blogs. My pr is 4…predicted a 5.
My traffic is only 5 to 50 each day.
How can I improve my traffic, without spending an arm, leg, and first born?
My link popularity is about 7200 .
michele
The most effective way to advertise on the Internet is to first set up a website and publish its domain name on major search directories such as Google.com, Yahoo.com [at http://www.google.com/addurl/?... and MSN.com since 85% of Internet shoppers rely on these search directories to provide them with goods and services. In a sense, these search directories are a very large Internet Yellow Pages.
Nevertheless, should your website or opening webpage fail to contain "generic" keywords, then anyone using such "generic" queries will not be able to discover your website. Your domain name [URL] of your website, in a sense, will be invisible, undiscoverable.
You may want to consider some simple algorithms which, when observed and committed in designing of a website with placement of various critical metatags that can surely achieve a high search engine presence and increase Internet traffic to your website. These metatag strategies work well with published webpages at Google and Yahoo.
Design: Should you create an extensive Flash-based website, make sure to fill-in the property entries such as the Title, Description and Keywords. Failing to do so, leaves no hard HTML or ALT resource that can be readily indexed by search robots. Also consider the Internet audience and their incoming setup. For example, if they are on analog/dialup, Flash webpages take too long to load up and therefore analog users will likely lose interest and discontinue entering the Flash site. On the other hand, anyone on hi-speed DSL lines, will welcome Flash pages which load quickly. So before designing a pure Flash websitge, ask the simple question, “Who’s my end user – is he on dialup or DSL?” And if you had to choose between these two users for maximum marketability, then select analog users since 80% of most resident users are still analog Internet subscribers and pure HTML designed webpages is best for them.
A non-Flash-based website which relies on hard text, is far easier to be indexed by search robots. Limit the use of stylized text saved as .gifs since as a graphic, they are not indexable by search robots.
Avoid use of frames since any number of search robots are unable to properly classify textual material.
Placement of Metatags:
A ranking or search order does take place with Google and Yahoo and it begins with the “Title” metag which should consist of no more than 65 characters separated by commas. The “Title” should describe in generic terms, the goods and services, followed by a location from which the resource is located, i.e., city, state. The placement of a domain name which is not generic within the “Title” is not appropriate, unless your domain name is a major recognizable brand name.
The second metatag is the “Description” which is usually 25-30 words to form a complete sentence which best describes one’s goods and services.
And the very last category – “Keywords” are also somewhat limited to 15-16 words which can be plural and compound in nature. Again, avoid multiple entries which could be mistaken as “spamdexed entries” which is defined as the loading, and submission of repetitive words into a particular metatag category. “Spamdexing” when discovered on a webpage and reported to Google’s spamreport.com can result in the elimination of your website from their search directory.
Here’s an example of a very highly-placed website on Yahoo.com: Begin with the search query “pizza downtown los angeles.” It will bring up some 1.4 million+ websites as results. Check out where “Pizza Next Door” is ranked. It’s in the Top Five! Again, Pizza Next Door’s high web presence was achieved by proper web design and placement of relevant metatags according to Yahoo’s publication guidelines.
Good luck!
Increase Link Popularity – External Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Gets You Google Top 10 Results
Web Marketing
Web Marketing
Top 5 Ways To Use Web 2.0 for Web Marketing
Web 2.0 and Web marketing is a match made in heaven. There are many ways to create traffic to your website using the power of Web 2.0. Below I am going to examine what I consider to be the top five.
Jack Humphrey, a well-known Web 2.0 expert, defines it this way in his Authority Black
Book:
Generally speaking, if people can submit links to content, submit content, make comments and vote good/bad content up/down thus affecting the amount of traffic that content can generate, it’s Web 2.0.
Blogs, wikis, file sharing sites, content rating systems, book-marking sites, and social networking sites are all examples of Web 2.0. Some of the more well-known Web 2.0 sites are YouTube (file sharing), Facebook and MySpace (social networking), Wikipedia (wiki), BlinkList (book-marking) and Digg (content rating system). The list is almost endless, and the traffic that these websites generate is absolutely staggering.
So how can you harness some of this traffic?
1) Create original, quality and compelling content and submit them to Web 2.0 websites.
For example, if you write an original and compelling article, you can submit it to content sharing and content rating system websites such as Digg, Propeller, Newsvine MarkTD or Reddit. Sometimes there content sharing and content rating system websites that specializes in a particular industry. MarkTD specializes in marketing, for example.
When you submit your article to these sites, people will give it a vote, and each vote moves the article up where it can be seen by more and more people. This has the potential of creating a lot of traffic for your website since each reader will need to click on the link to go to your site to read the full article. And you’re building a permanent link pointing to your website that can be followed for months and years to come. (And don’t forget, a link from a quality site to your website helps in your search engine rankings too.)
Or you can create an original video and submit it to YouTube. Here it will get rated and possibly seen by many people. If the video contains your website or a plug for your business, then all the better. YouTube is not the only video sharing website however. There are many, and one video can be submitted to them all. This same concept applies to your original images, photographs, digital art and audio files.
2) Web 2.0-ize other people’s sites that contain a link back to your website
I’ll assume you already know how your bookmarks (or Favorites) work in your browser. There are websites that exist that act in the same way, but the bookmarks you set are public. BlinkList and Simpy are two examples of this. People’s public bookmarks are browsed by others and lead to clicks to the sites you’ve bookmarked. So be sure to bookmark your business website and inner pages that are important.
Also, these bookmarks can appear in search results in engines like Google and Yahoo. And some even think that search engines use book-marking sites in their algorithms, although this has not been conclusively proven. Simpy and BlinkList are two more examples of these kinds of Web 2.0 book-marking sites.
Let’s say you write an original, quality article and post it to your business website. Then let’s say you submit the article to a handful of content rating websites like some of the ones explained above. To further market this article, you can then use social book-marking sites to bookmark the page on the content rating websites that list your new article and that contain a link back to your article. This can be very powerful.
Or let’s say you notice that an authority in your industry has a link on its website that points back to your website. Go ahead and bookmark the page on the authority site, thus marketing it, which in turn markets your site as well. One particular Web 2.0 website that is very popular and can generate tons of traffic is StumbleUpon. This site allows people to give any page you deem worthy a “thumbs-up”. And if you get enough “thumbs-up”, people browsing StumbleUpon will see it and click over to that page. So I always make it a point to “Stumble” my business websites’ homepages and sites that contain links to my business websites as well.
If you become an active member in a handful of Web 2.0 websites and utilize these first two suggestions alone, you will be amazed at the kind of traffic you can generate.
3) Engage in the conversations and activities
When I suggest above to become an active member I mean that you need to visit a few of your favorite Web 2.0 sites on a regular basis and actually contribute to the site with your opinions, votes, comments and submissions. For instance, if you like Digg or Newsvine, visit them often and submit quality articles, content and sites to them. And they don’t all have to be your sites.
In fact, the more impartial you are, the more people will trust you when you submit one of your articles. And you ought to vote for other people’s Digg submissions as well. You may enjoy Facebook, Linkedin ro MySpace. First, create a profile on the site, then go out and make connections within the community. The more you do this, the more you can harness the power of the people you meet to help market your website or yourself.
Visit and comment on blogs in your industry. This is another tried and true way to engage in the online conversation. Blogs are Web 2.0 and have been around for a while now. Unfortunately, leaving blog comments has been abused by so many people that you absolutely must only leave blog comments that contribute to the overall blog post.
Only add your website’s link if you’re asked to. These links won’t help your search engine rankings but can drive traffic to your site.
4) Encourage visitors to bookmark and tag your content
If you have a blog, add a feature that shows up at the end of every post that allows users to bookmark or submit your post to other Web 2.0 websites. ‘Share This’ is just such a blog add-on (or plug-in) that can do this for you. If you have a WordPress blog you’ll be able to find a plug-in that allows you to integrate this type of feature (including Share This) into your blog very easily and without the need for any technical knowledge. If you write a memorable or compelling post, people can use this to make bookmarks to the post, Stumble it, Digg it and so forth. All of this can lead to more traffic.
5) Add a Web 2.0 feature to your website
First of all, your business website needs a blog. If you don’t have one, then stop reading this and go to it. A blog enables you and your employees an easy way to post new information that is relevant to your business and helpful to your customers. And it allows your customers to easily communicate with you by leaving comments.
But beyond a blog, what other Web 2.0 features can you add to your website? If you’re selling products, consider adding in a feature that allows customers to rate each product. It can be something as simple as one to five stars or more elaborate where they leave reviews. Amazon does this and it one of the major driving forces in their sales. When potential customers see that your products are rated by existing customers, they’ll be more likely to trust you and buy.
You could add a wiki to your website. A wiki is software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content. By encouraging your website visitors to create content for you, you’re allowing your site to grow, become more informative and thus creating more chances to be found in search engines. These features can be found as third-party software packages and integrated into your existing website surprisingly easily.
The power of Web 2.0 is substantial. It’s time you begin to harness its potential and by following these five suggestions, you’ll be well on your way.
About the Author
Jason O’Connor is the owner of The Net Gazette (http://www.thenetgazette.net/), a free newsletter that teaches Web professionals all about Web design, development and Web marketing.
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