For years now, the importance of link popularity has increased. Basically, link popularity is “How many other sites link to yours?” But more importantly is “Who are those sites,” “Are they related to your topic,” and “What do those sites say that your site is about?” This is called link reputation. Many tests have shown that link reputation is more important than link popularity. In other words, who is linking to you and how they link to you is more important than how many link to you. Almost all of the major search engines have developed algorithms that give ranking weight to your incoming links.
There is another reason you should want to build linking alliances on the Web, that is, TRAFFIC. When you exchange links with another company, it is likely that you may receive some good, targeted traffic from their site also. Actually, it is best to look at the viability of the potential for that site to provide you with the type of visitors who would be interested in what you offer first and not worry about the off-page ranking factors. Most likely, if the answer to the question, “would people clicking to my site from this site also be interested in what I have to sell, just as they were interested in the site they came from,” is a yes, then you would probably get a boost in link popularity and if done correctly, link reputation.
I usually look at the relatedness of the prospective linking alliance first. Think like this, If you sell tea and they sell cups, you would probably be a good match. Or if you sell spoons and they sell forks, you sell pencils and they sell sharpeners, you sell boats and they sell rafts, you’re a publisher and they sell books, you sell rods and they sell reels; these are all examples of potentially good link exchanges without necessarily linking to a “competitor.” Building link popularity is serious business, and it is not the easiest thing to do. There is much research and many emails and phone calls and follow-ups involved. When done correctly though, the benefits of the time invested in building liks are golden.
In the last quarter of 2003, Google made serious changes to its ranking system, shifting an incredible amount of weight to link popularity. SEO still works in Google, in fact it is still very important, but if you have competitive keywords and people are in a bidding war for them in the Google AdWords PPC program, you will need to embark on a link building campaign if you want your optimized site to perform for those keywords in Google or any of the sites she provides primary search results too, including: AOL Search, iWon and Netscape Search.
I know how to build the right links and I’d be happy to help you improve, or teach you how to improve both your link popularity and link reputation. There are proven effective methods and tools for getting the job done right and efficiently. Would you like to consult about this? Send me an email and we can set an appointment for a consultation.
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