Link Popularity and Link Exchanges

Link Popularity explained

Link popularity (or the importance) of a website is rated by Google using a certain algorithm that's based on the quality and the quantity of links that point to your site. This means Google assigns a higher Page Rank (PR) to a site that has more incoming links. It's just not the number of links that point to your site, but also the type of sites that contain these links. To be popular, these sites should be relevant to the theme of your web page. The more "relevant" the theme on the "pointing" website, the better rank (or more popular) you get. This whole process of "partnering" with other sites to point to yours is called "Link Exchange program" or "Reciprocal Link campaign". And the concept is referred to as Link Popularity. There are various techniques and procedures one can follow to achieve "good" external links to help you increase your Link Popularity. Search engines use the number and quality of links pointing back to your site as an indication of the site's value

As a part of our Search Engine Optimization services process, this phase is carried out after a detailed study of "who" to link with and by utilizing strategic anchor text from the results of our Keyword Research process.

Link Campaigns and Keywords

Keywords in your web pages are very important. But keywords outside your pages can also affect the page results. I.e. the keywords in links pointing to your site are very important. If hundreds of links around the world point to one of your pages and all these links contain the words leather shoes, then Google and, presumably, other search engines will get the idea that your pages are somehow related to leather shoes.

In effect, Google uses site owner's opinion to tell it what other owners' sites are about. Link text is also known as anchor text. The link tag is an tag, and the A stands for anchor.

Types of Link Campaigns

All major search engines place some emphasis on link popularity in their ranking algorithms. There are two main types of links that work best to increase your link popularity: links from other sites that focus on the same keyword phrases your site focuses and links from relevant categories in major directories and industry-specific portals. You can go about your link building process using either the reciprocal link exchange process or a one-way inbound link campaign.

Link Exchange (Reciprocal Link) Process

You start a campaign wherein you ask other websites with similar or related themes to link to you in exchange for you keeping a link on your site that points to their website. It is important to establish early on the exact definition of a quality link your sites. Research and identify Web sites that link to your competitors and find sites by keyword search. Identify sites in the following categories:

Resource directories (portals or sites that offer tools to run your event) Strategic partners: i.e. organizations that focus on your targeted industry. Vertical-specific portals Look at your competitor sites and check who links to them.

Criteria for exchanging links Which sites/themes you want to stay away from? What is the minimum home page PR and minimum link page PR? Any restrictions on the number of links per page on your partner site? For example you may not want to have your link on a page that have over, say, 40 links. Any other specific requirement?

Inbound (One-way) Links: Some tips Make sure you have very high quality content on your site. Directories: Spend a lot of time looking for directories to add your site to. Search on Google for "add url", "add link", "directory", "web directory". Also look at big directories like ODP, Zeal and Yahoo for categories that fit your site. Keep a "Link to this page" button on each web page of your site. Write quality content with your links on it. Submit to various related sites for free use by visitors. Look for Hubs..try to have back link from the hub Create an Article (pdf or html form) publish it and submit it in other sites. Have your site description in it. Give out press release of your site content or new article. Give away software, service or advice. Create Articles and allow people to copy it's content as long as they give credit to original source. Pay sometimes to be listed in niche directories. Start with reciprocal linking become some authority and prepare unique content. Be Original and Unique in the content.

Start Your reciprocal link exchange program !!

Initiate your reciprocal link exchange program by developing a site theme, topic or title that you will use as part of your link-request invitations. Many sites limit the length and syntax of this variable so try to keep it short, ideally less than 25 characters and make it directly relevant to your site’s content.

Because most sites use this theme or title to hyperlink to your site, be sure to include the one or two keywords or a short keyphrase that is of the most value to your optimization program.

The exact keywords that link to your site are just as valuable as the link itself when determining the overall impact of a backlink on search engine rankings. When that is done, develop a site description in a manner similar to that above. Try to keep your description under 150 characters as some online submission sites could eliminate some of your most important keywords after that point.

When writing your site's description, try not to make superlative statements and don't risk sounding spammy by simply listing some keywords placed here and there.

Another important suggestion for your initial preparation phase is to devise a way of recording your requests and submissions. You will soon realize that, like us, an effective reciprocal link exchange program that really works can leave a lot of email trails that can rapidly overwhelm you in a short time.

Determining potential link partners
Where do you go to find content-related and industry-related web sites that will link with your site? Well, you can start by searching a popular engine such as Google or another, and entering key phrases such as add a site, suggest a site, add link etc. Be certain to request exact search results as these key phrases are often included on small directories and categorized as such on certain link pages.

We have found on many occasions that this method will return sites at which you’ll submit your site through an online form itemized by category, title, description and other relevant information.

Next, your research should concentrate on key phrases such as industry links, where the word industry is an important keyword related to your site’s industry or field of interest. You might discover that this search technique returns more results for smaller linked pages that will require you to email the webmaster for possible inclusion. Start writing a list of the sites you find relevant to yours and then you can come back later.

Sparsing and fine-tuning your list
Keep in mind that, of all the web sites you have written on that list, not all might be willing to provide a link to your site. Their reasons or possible objections could be personal or otherwise- whatever the reason, you should not insist or become offended at a refusal. Just remember that a good link exchange program can help you by a large factor in the Google Page Rank algorithm.

You should install the Google Toolbar on your browser if it's not done yet, so that you can view PageRank when visiting any web site. Do not submit your site for inclusion on any page with a PageRank of two or lower as links from these sites might actually have a negative effect on your optimization campaign.

Your next step is to determine whether a search engine crawler (or spider) will be able to discover the link as one going to your site or web page. A true backlink is one that directs from visible text directly to your site. Always keep in mind that a text link is ten times more efficient than any gif or jpg image link. Search engines cannot see or read images like humans can. What they crave on is pure, old-fashioned text. Now many small online directories use scripts to organize their data.

So instead of actually providing a link to http://www.yoursite.com/ they effectively format their directory to include a number of links in the form of http://theirsite.com/cgi-bin/links/jump.cgi?12345. Though click through traffic is directed to the same place with both formats, we found on most occasions that the latter provides no real value to your optimization program per se. As a hint, a link that opens as a new page from the referring site is a valid link.

The actual link request process or invitation
On many industry-related web sites and others, most have what is called a links page or partners page, such as our own web site wich you can see at the bottom of any of our pages on this web site. Many links pages of these sites allow you to submit your site’s information to the webmaster through an online form. When completing these forms be sure to provide complete and accurate information.

Evaluate your options when confidential contact information such as address, phone number and email address is optional. You don’t want your name or email address put on any solicitation list or spam-related sites. However, providing a valid email address allows means for the webmaster to contact you should they have questions or comments concerning your site. You could also consider creating a temporary email address that you would use for link submissions exclusively.

In the on-going development of your reciprocal link exchange program (RLEP), you’ll come across some links pages that do not display clear instructions for submitting your site. Some of these sites might not be true-to-form link pages but rather lists of personal favorites or similar theme-category web sites with little relevancy to your site. In either case, it doesn’t hurt to ask to have your site reviewed. Just remember that relevancy is the name of the game in RLEP and to that end, write the webmaster a basic letter that includes your site’s URL, title as well as the URL of the page on which you would like inclusion.

Many webmasters are in charge of multiple sites and might not know to which site you’re referring too so make certain there are no mistakes or misunderstandings. Be concise yet thorough with the information you provide in that email in order to minimize the effort it takes the targeted webmaster to summarize and consequently list your web site on his or her's. Begin your email with a friendly greeting and end with a statement inviting the addressee to contact you with any questions concerning your site. A polite and personal message is less likely to be confused with spam-reciprocal-link requests, as most webmasters today are constantly flooded with spam messages.

Finally, polish off & perfect your strategy
The last step is your most important: personally thank all positively responding webmasters who agreed to your reciprocal link invitation. Regardless of any frustration or confusion you may encounter in the process of your link exchange program, always remember that other websites are actually doing you a favor by posting your link, even if you post their's on your site.

Link Building: Where to Start?

How to Start Your Reciprocal Links Campaign

One common link-building tip calls for trading links with companies offering information or products compatible or synergistic to your own. These should not be Web sites directly competitive with your own, but instead be complementary. Sounds simple enough, right? But, the question then arises: "Where do I start?"

For the well informed, there's a gold mine of strategic linking and partnering opportunities out there. You just have to know where to look. There are multiple ways you can locate companies who are well suited to send you targeted traffic while at the same time improving your link popularity and rankings:

1. Link Check Your Competitors

Take advantage of free services like www.linkpopularitycheck.com to find all the sites that link to your competitors. Click the Details link to view the list. If your product or service is stronger than your competitor, then consider visiting some of these sites and approaching them in regard to linking to you as well, or as a replacement to your competitor depending on the situation. These sites have already demonstrated an interest in linking to Web sites similar to your own, so many will be ideal candidates.

2. Search Catalogs for complementary Sites

Major category-based engines like Yahoo!, Looksmart, and Open Directory divide their content into topics. You can often find a neatly organized list of sites that are complementary to your own by browsing these categories. Visit the sites you find and contact them in regard to adding a link to your site, or to specific content you offer.

3. Link Check complementary Sites

If you have strong competitors, or simply prefer to not go head to head with your competitors, link check complementary sites! A major site that is complementary, but not competitive to your own may offer an array of links that are also complementary. Find Websites that cater to the same audience you do, but do not sell the exact same things.

Using these methods, it won't take long before you have a huge list of sites that may be willing to link to you. You'll soon discover that taking advantage of relatively inexpensive tools to narrow this list to the most important candidates is well worth the money.

For example, OptiLink is the most extensive link analysis tool on the market to my knowledge. It will not only analyze your own link structure, but that of complementary Web sites. It can then rank these sites by the ones that are the most popular. That way you don't waste valuable time on relatively unknown sites that will not significantly improve your link reputation or deliver much traffic. Visit Optilink directly for more information.

In addition, many engines such as Google calculate link reputation for all sites that link to you. Therefore, linking sites having a greater popularity or link reputation will affect your own link reputation to a much greater degree. Once you have a decent link reputation, you'll find it to be much easier to obtain top rankings when you go to optimize your content.

When you do request a link trade, keep in mind these important tips:

1. Be sure you have developed genuine content on your Web site of interest to the trading partner. Take the time to point out specific articles that would be of interest to THEIR visitors. Tell them they can host the article on their Web site if they'll simply credit you as the source and add a link to your site. Do all the work for them. E-mail them the page with a discrete credit at the bottom. Be sure the link to your site contains your important keywords to bolster your rankings on those keywords.
2. Explain the advantages to the potential link partner and the advantages your site has to their visitors. They must clearly understand how linking to you benefits them.
3. If you plan to link back to them as an enticement, consider telling them where the link will be placed, or set the link up in advance with the stipulation that you'll be glad to leave it there if they'll be kind enough to link back to you.
4. Take the time to look over their site and then suggest where a link to you might be appropriate. Consider supplying example text to make this easy for them. Look for pages with relatively few outgoing links. Your link reputation, at least on Google, will be reduced in relation to the number of other links on the referring page.
5. Most importantly, personalize your e-mails! You must distinguish yourself from all the spam most Web site owners are swamped with daily. If the link is particularly important to you, call them personally on the phone, write them a letter, or send a fax to show them you're serious.

Anytime you do achieve a link to your site, consider submitting the domain or the page the link resides on to ensure that the search engine sees it and updates your link popularity score. If the page with your link is never indexed, then your link popularity score will never improve. Of course, links also benefit you through increased traffic, so link popularity and improved rankings are not the only benefits you'll receive.