SEO: Link Building, Link Popularity and Page Rank

Link Building

The importance of the link in SEO

A linking campaign is a necessary step in the overall success of your web site. You can put up a web site, have great web design, and have great content; but without other web sites linking to your web site no one will know about it.

 

Furthermore, the search engines rely on links in order to find new web sites and new web pages. A proper linking campaign will not only increase your web site' s online visibility and traffic, it will allow the search engines to find your site and help your web site get indexed.

 

Basically, link popularity is a measurement of quality, relevant inbound links to a page. It is used by search engines as a method of establishing the importance of a site and is a major factor in Google Page Rank and therefore Google and most other search engine rankings.

 

More and more search engines rank your web pages based on the number and quality of links that point to your web site, known as link popularity.

 

Link popularity is the number of incoming links that you have to your site from other sites. These links can be from directories, articles, or web sites. The more links you have pointing to your site, the better.

 

The number and quality of links that you have pointing to your site are a factor that many search engines consider when determining the rank or your site and individual pages of your site. Also, the more incoming links you have, the greater the traffic to your site.

 

Link popularity dictates that the sheer number of incoming links is not as important as the quality of the sites that are doing the linking. This helps prevent sites getting to the top of search engine rankings by simply setting up link farms.

 

The end goal is to have the greatest number of sites pointing to yours with anchor text on the link itself like, “Your Company – Offering (insert your key phrases here)”.

 

Getting Links To Your Site

But how can you get other sites to link to yours? The best way is to have quality original content, be an authority on your subject, offer free information, articles or reviews. you need to give people a reason to want to link to you.

 

Great content will make other web site owners want to link to your site. It will also keep your visitors coming back for more and get them to tell others about your site.

 

Once you have created a site with some good content, one of the fastest way to get some quality incoming links is to get listings in the popular directories. Look for directories with page rank that you can submit to for free. Conisder localisation by submitting to local directories.

 

If you have an article or press release there are many sites you can submit them to that will allow you to include a link back to your site.If you are considering exchanging links only do so with relevant and cmplimentary sites that will bring in targeted traffic.

 

What Not To Do

  • Do not waste your time with automated linking, search engine or directory submission software.
  • Don't expect everyone you contact to want to link to you or exchange links.
  • Don't expect a reply. If you don't get a response, you may want to try again in a couple of months.
  • Don't be impatient. Just because you don't receive a reply, it doesn't mean you won't get the link eventually. Many site owners will file link requests and come back to review them when time allows.
  • Don't set up a big page of links to just any site, and don't exchange links with sites that do the same.
  • Don't exchange links with sites that you would not want your visitors to see. Also, do not ever exchange links with sites that contain nothing but a huge collection of links (AKA "link farms").

 

Great Content

Your web site' s content is ultimately responsible for it ability or inability to get links from other web sites. If your web site has no content or has bad content then there's not much of a chance that someone who owns another web site will link to your web site. If you have great content on your web site then you have the potential to get links from other web sites you just have to tell everyone that your web site exists so they'll take a look at it and hopefully link to it or recommend it to others.

What is great content? In my opinion, great content is anything that people will link to with what I call an "unsolicited link". An "unsolicited link" is when someone recommends your web site or its content by writing an article about it, mentioning it in their blog, or just adding a link to your web site without you having to ask them for the link. Link bait is essentially something that will entice someone to link to your web site without you having to ask for it link bait will help you catch unsolicited links.

Additional examples if great content or "link bait" would include content that stirs emotion. If someone loves it, hates it, or has an opinion about your content, they'll link to it with an unsolicited link. People often link to rich media content that's informative, humorous, or silly.

 

Internal Linking

Internal linking" is the links on your web site that you control which web pages you link to on your web site and how you link to them. The internal links on your web site must be search engine friendly. They must be "crawlable" links that include descriptive anchor text. For example, if you include a "telecom glossary" on your web site as a resource, then the links that point to that telecom glossary should include the anchor text of "telecom glossary", which describes what the visitor is going to find when they click on the link. It also helps that this is most likely the search term someone is going to use when they search at a search engine looking for a telecom glossary.

All the web pages on your web site must be unique and all pages must have at least one link from another web page in order to remain in most search engine indices. Your home page should link to your most important pages (like your products page, your categories page, and your great "link bait" content pages). And all the other pages on your site should link to your most important pages, as well. Think of it this way the more links a page has the more important it appears to be from a search engine perspective.

 

What is Link Bait?

What really is link bait? It's something on your web site that causes someone to link to you. By creating something on your web site that's funny, controversial, informative, or creative, it will gain natural links which is the key to top search engine rankings.

 

What is PageRank?

PageRank is Google's way of deciding a page's importance. It matters because it is one of the factors that determines a page's ranking in the search results. It isn't the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one.

PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is. Google calculates a page's importance from the votes cast for it. How important each vote is is taken into account when a page's PageRank is calculated.

 

Does all this sound too complicated or like too much work?
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