Promote Your Website - Part III Link Popularity
By Nowshade Kabir İRusbiz.com
What is link popularity?
The quantity of links in different websites pointing
to your sites is called link popularity of your website.
The more popular is your site the more links you get
from other websites and vice versa.
Why is it so important?
Links from high traffic websites furnish you with constant
stream of visitors. Other website marketing efforts
i.e. email marketing, might give good influx of visitors
while the campaign lasts but the quantity diminishes
once the campaign is over. Links are a different story!
Once a link is installed, it might start bringing a
steady flow of visitors all the time, depending on the
website where the link was placed.
Link popularity is also crucial to search engine ranking
of your website. Search engines, especially Google,
claim that link popularity is one of the key factors
that they consider in their search algorithm while indexing
a website. What would be the rank of a website in a
search result depend on its link popularity in a very
big way.
So, how can you conduct an effective link popularity
development campaign and build traffic for your website?
Content is the king
Prior to start a link popularity campaign, you should
seriously question yourself, what would be the reason
for the other sites to post a link pointing to your
website? Most high traffic sites are quite picky about
putting links, and won’t do it without any apparent
reason.
If your site boasts quality content that the visitors
of other sites might find valuable, chances are there
that those sites would be interested in posting a link
of your site on their relevant web pages. High quality
content that gets updated regularly will definitely
help you getting more links and subsequently more visitors.
If even you are just a web store, you can still add
much sought-after content to your site, such as, detail
product information, articles related to the specific
products, comparison tables, etc.
If it is really difficult to get relevant content for
your website, try getting a valuable tool that might
be interesting for visitors and incorporate it to your
website. You must have noticed that free search engine
submission forms are common on Search Engine Optimization
sites. Giveaways like e-books, white papers, articles
and other freebies are also good for creating interest
to a website.
Submit website to various directories
When your new website is up and running, first thing
you should do is to submit your site to many search
directories such as, Yahoo!, DMOZ etc. available on
the Internet. Not only, this will help you get quality
backward links to your site, this is also the fastest
method for your site to get crawled by search engines
spiders and get indexed by them.
Don’t underestimate the value of the many regional
and industry specific directories. Try submitting your
site as many as possible relevant local directories.
Examples of these directories are municipal business
directory, local chamber of commerce directory etc.
If you are a seller of, for example, metal related products;
get your site enlisted in as many metal industry associated
directories as you can manage.
Get reciprocal links
Since backward links are so important, building link
popularity by exchanging links with other websites should
be a priority in your online marketing effort.
Which are the websites that you should consider to get
backward links to your website? Your objective should
be – not just having any backward link from any
site, the sites that you are getting reciprocal link
has to be relevant to the content of your website as
well. First of all, if you get a link from a website
which has nothing in common with your site, you, most
probably, will not receive any traffic from that site.
The second and most important issue is – the search
engines, while calculating your website’s rank
in a specific keyword search result, consider, mainly,
the backward links which are relevant to your site.
Search engine Google uses a unique Page rank system
to determine how relevant your website is. Your site's
Page Rank depends on backward links to your site. However,
if the page from where your website gets the backward
link has more outbound links then incoming ones, the
value of this link gets reduced. A link to your site
will have the biggest impact on your Page rank:
• If the page itself has a good page rank.
• There are very few outbound links from the page.
To check out your site's Page rank, download the Google
Toolbar from http://toolbar.google.com/
and install. After that, go to your website. On the
tool bar, you will see the rank of your index page in
a scale of 0 to 10. The rating is considered good if
it is five or more.
Make sure, while exchanging links you select the websites
that have page rank no less than yours.
How to find the websites that you should swap links
with?
The easiest way is to check out the backward links
to the website of your most prominent Internet based
competitor or industry leader of your field. Other
option is to run a search based on the most relevant
keywords to your website and check out backward links
to the first ten websites.
In the search box of Google,
Altavista and
AllTheWeb type
link: and then the URL of the site to view all the
sites that have backward links to this site. Visit
these sites to find the best one to exchange links
and then contact them with a nice email.
I will also suggest you to check out the number of
visitors the site receives before offering a link
swap. The tool that will help you figuring out the
quantity of traffic a site gets, you can download
from http://download.alexa.com/
by clicking on the button “Free Tool Bar”.
This is also a very good tool to analyze web traffic.
The tool also shows which other similar sites people
tend to visit alongside with the site that you are
viewing now.
If a site gets significantly less visitors than
yours, what is the point of having a link form that
site?
While looking for websites to swap links, don’t
forget about your partners, suppliers and buyers.
These sites are capable of bringing major traffic
and are indeed relevant to your site’s subject
matter!
Your link popularity campaign should also include
the following methods. However, mind it, these techniques
require tedious work from your side.
Issue Press Releases
Press releases are a good way of exposing your website
to mass and increase your link popularity. Whenever
you are coming up with a new product or service, overhauling
your website, adding new elements to your site or conducting
a seminar, etc. you should issue a press release. It
is also a very cost effective method of getting publicity
for your site. To broadcast your press release you can
use one of the free media release sites: http://www.prweb.com
Write Articles
If you are dedicated to popularize your website, you
must have substantial knowledge of the subject related
to your website. Why not, write articles on your subjects
of expertise and circulate them on the Internet and
post on your website? Apart from this will add good
content to your website, if other websites and newsletters
publish your articles, you will get free publicity
and increase your link popularity.
Build an Affiliate Program
If you sell a product or service through your website,
you should seriously consider developing an affiliate
program for your site. An affiliate program is when
a visitor from your affiliate’s site comes to
your site using the link that you provided to the
affiliate and buy something; the affiliate will get
a commission from you. The affiliate program can expand
your business substantially. Since your affiliates
require posting your links on their sites, this increases
your link popularity as well.
Participate in Discussion Groups and Forums
This is also a great way of increasing your link popularity.
There are literally thousands of discussion groups
and forums on every conceivable subject on the Internet.
You should actively participate in some of them, those
which are most relevant to your area of expertise.
The signature along with your website address that
you post there while asking a question or answering
to a question also boosts your link popularity.
Link Exchange Programs
You can also participate one of the link swap programs
available on the Internet. Unfortunately, most of
the automated link exchange offers that you receive
through them are random and irrelevant to your site.
But, however, I would suggest you to give them a try,
as chances are there that you still might receive
some good offers. You can also actively search for
sites to swap links in their directories.
Development of link popularity is an on going process.
You have to work on this constantly. But, the outcome
that you might achieve from your endeavor also could
be significant.
