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Promote Your Website - 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 worthy 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 enormous 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 assist 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 worthy 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 necessary 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 worthy 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:/ oolbar.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 race 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 worthy 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 worthy 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 worthy 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 purchase 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 worthy 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 worthy 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.
