The 123’s Of Link Popularity
Link popularity is one of the most powerful ways to get your site noticed, get more traffic, help your ranking in places like Google and increase your web sites value to your visitors.
And the fastest way to higher link popularity is to exchange links with other popular web sites.
Now before you say * Well duh!*
There are a few things to keep in mind before you start your quest to exchange links with other sites.
Because all links are not created equal, linking to the ‘wrong’ sites can actually hurt you in the long run.
So here are a few tips to help you get the most out of your linking campaign regardless of whether you do it all by hand or you use one of the many fine link management software tools available online.
Before asking to, or agreeing to exchange links with another web site you should:
# 1) Check Potential Link Partners Traffic Rank With Alexa.com.
Alexa it’s an online software tool they can give you a lot of info about other sites, but what you’re really most concerned with here is the traffic rank of the sites you
plan on exchanging links with.
Because Alexa ranks sites backwards, the old saying, *less is more* is particularly important here.
I know you might be saying ‘huh?’ Well here’s a bit of explanation:
Unlike regular search engines that rank from best to worst, Alexa ranks sites from most popular to the least popular. So that the LOWER the traffic rank the better.
For example: at the time I write this Yahoo.com is the number 2 most popular web site, so it has a traffic Rank of ‘2′, whereas Google.com has a traffic Rank of 3, meaning that it’s the third most popular web site on the Web.
And eBay has a traffic rank of 8, meaning that it is the 8th most popular web site in the world.
Hopefully you’re getting the idea. The point to all of this is that you only want to exchange links with other sites whose Alexa traffic rank is 125,000 or LESS.
That don’t get me wrong, if you want to link your site to another site and its traffic rank is more than hundred thousand, you can. Just make sure that it provides important
and RELATED content that compliments your site.
But if your goal is to boost your link popularity, then linking to sites whose traffic rank is more than 125,000 isn’t going to help you accomplish your linking goals very fast.
A great tool you can use to make this process faster is the Alexa toolbar. You can download the free Alexa toolbar from: http://download.alexa.com/
Once installed this special browser toolbar will show you the traffic rank, as well some other interesting statistics for any web page you visit.
But remember you’re really only interested in the Alexa traffic rank at this point.
# 2) Only Exchange Links With Sites That have a Google Page Rank Of 3 Or More.
Here’s why: Google ranks web sites on a scale of 1 through 10, with 10 being the most important. (Just the opposite of Alexa by the way)
Now some people say that your link partners Google page ranking is actually not all that important but I personally happen to disagree.
If you haven’t yet, I strongly encourage you to download the Google toolbar too.
Once installed this special browser toolbar will show you the Google page rank for any web site you visit and give you an a clear indication how important Google thinks that link partners web site is.
You can get it here: http://toolbar.google.com/
The bottom line is that if Google thinks your partners web site is important and they have awarded it a higher *page ranking*, and that web site links to your web site, then your web site must be important too.
# 3) Try To Avoid Exchanging Links With Sites Whose Pages (including links pages) Are Dynamically Generated.
This means avoiding trading links with sites that use javascript links, .asp, cgi or jump link pages, drop-down-box links or sites built using frames!
Here is why: Search engines in general are stupid. They like HTML pages. Anything else just confuses them. Yes, .asp and .php pages will and do get indexed but you have to be really careful that you aren’t dynamically generating these links.
If potential link partners are making it difficult for the search engines to index their link pages, then there’s a chance at the search engines will just ignore those pages.
And what good does that do you?
The bottom line is that your potential link partners links pages must be accessible from their home page via a standard HTML link.
# 4) Now One Of The Most Important Inside Tips I Can Share With You Is To Restrict The Total Number Of Your Link Categories.
Again, I’m sure this statement is highly controversial with some of the other linking experts out there, but I know this works so pay close attention.
You must only exchange links with other web sites that are in some way directly related to your product or industry.
For example:
If you’re web site is about ‘dog training’, it would be appropriate for you to exchange links with dog breeders, shelters, pet supply sites, dog house manufacturers, dog training supplies, dog groomers, veterinarians,
animal-rights groups, etc. Get the idea?
Setting up your linking strategy this way will ensure that you have a network of tightly themed and related web sites all linking to your site, boosting your popularity, page rank, and traffic.
But how many times have we seen web sites the link to anyone and anything and end up having thousands of non-related sites in their linking web? Thousands! It’s just stupid when web masters do this.
So make sure that to keep your link categories tightly and directly related to what you or site does or sells.
Choose to ignore this simple strategy and you’re almost guaranteed to be recognized as a *link farm* and have your page ranking dropped from Google and possibly other search engines as well.
*** Side Note:
Link farms are considered nothing more than search engines spam. They are nothing more then an outdated way of trying to cheat the search engines into thinking that your site is really more important than it really is.
Don’t link to link farm!
# 5) Use Keywords In Both Your Link Page URL & Description Tag.
Use your most important keywords in the hyper-link portion of your link. Then use your secondary keywords in the description.
To find out what keywords or phrases you should be using you can use the *Top Keywords* finder tool at:
http://www.searchenginepromotiontools.com or the Keyword Suggestion tool Google Adwords.
Both of these free tools will tell you how many searches were done the previous month for the keywords that you’ve chosen.
Even though there may be a lot of competition for those keywords – you should use the most searched of those keywords in your link tag.
Hopefully you’ll use these insider tips to boost your search engine rankings and link popularity.
If you do it right it only takes a few weeks before you start to see major changes in link popularity and traffic.
Best wishes and good luck with your linking!
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