Why is Link Popularity So Important?

Just how important is link popularity? Let me tell you a story. I had an mp3 search engine site that didn't even rank in the top 200 at Google. I pointed some links at it, and lo and behold, I jumped up to number 90. I started some other sites and pointed more links at it and jumped to number 30. More links and I was number 15. I've added even more links lately and I'm now number 7; and it's all because of link popularity. It doesn't just work with Google, it works with all true crawlers (Lycos, AllTheWeb, etc.): Basically, the same thing happened at AltaVista; I wasn't even in the top 200 at first, now after increasing my link popularity, I'm #5 there.

More recently I received a startling revelation about link popularity by accident. It's not just the number of links pointing to a site that matter, but also what the links themselves say. I have a free greeting cards page, but to save space I put a link on a bunch of my sites that says "Free Ecards." Nowhere on the page itself, in the meta tags or in the the body, was the term "free ecard" mentioned, yet I found myself ranked number 18 at Google, just because of the links. Since then I added the term "free ecards" to the tags and body, and I put up more links to it. I'm currently number 6 at Google and am getting 1,000 hits a day on just that page alone.

Link popularity relates to the number of links pointed to a web site. Over the years apparently the number of links pointing to a site has become of more prominent importance in terms of search engine positioning, ie: websites with lots of sites linking to them rank better in searches. Some writers on the subject even claim that search engines take into account the "relevance" of the links, ie: sites linked to by similar sites rate better. Search engines are secretive about their exact practices and it's hard to tell what's true. One thing is certain, though link popularity is touted as a newly emergent element on the scene, it actually has been significant since the beginning because of the "crawl" factor. Regardless of whether or not most search engine software is sophisticated enough to actually meter link popularity as a crucial factor, and especially whether or not it is sophisticated enough to guage themed links, the more links a site has pointing to it, the more often it is crawled by spiders, and the more often it is indexed. Therefore, it is crucial for a site to have at least a few external links pointing to it. This is more true now that some engines are even dropping sites that don't have at least one external link, and this could possibly become a trend with search engines to help conserve database space.

If you have more than one site, be sure they are pointed at each other to increase your link popularity. In fact you want to get a link everywhere you can: directories, classifieds, link exchanges, etc. Note that a link from a search engine like Alta Vista or an index like Yahoo doesn't count as link-backs because they are stored in a cgi-bin database, which is disallowed in the robots.txt. The best place to get link-backs are on directories that publish pages in the public areas of their site. When you go to a directory go down a level to look at the site listings and note the full URL address. Does the last part say, "cgi-bin/," or does it say something like, "home/internet/submissions.html"? The former is in a potentially disallowed cgi-bin. The latter is in the public docs area, and that's where you want your links.

Final Notes:

Top search engines definitely now have the technology to rate the quality of a site linking to your site and use that as part of their ranking criteria. The more your site is related to sites that link to it, the better you'll do.

Avoid "link farms," collections of links on pages which serve no purpose other than an attempt to increase link popularity, and be sure not to link to link farms.

If you'd like to get a solid link-back join our Link Exchange.