What is Link Popularity?
Link popularity is a generic term used to define how popular a site is in terms of the number of references found to that particular site across the internet in the form of links. It’s not a figure determined by search engines themselves, but rather assessed and analyzed by such engines to better establish where your site shows up on search results.
Building Link Popularity
Link popularity and link building work in an open market. The best links are from other sites that link to you because they have faith in what you are doing and want to be associated with your work. It’s best practice to seek out links from sites that cover similar topics and that are as reputable, if not more reputable, as yours.
Your site’s link popularity fluctuates based on the quality of sites that link to you as well as the quantity of sites that link to you.
Quality of Sites
Links from stronger, more trustworthy sites hold more singular value than those from distrusted or lesser known sites. While links from assorted pages and websites do help, a link from a site like the New York Times’ site or CNN.com will count much more in terms of building your link popularity.
In that regard, keep in mind that you want to work towards getting links from topic-specific sites. If you run a website about skiing, it makes more sense and is more beneficial to build links from other skiing-related sites. Getting a link with a general sports website is still good, but more progress can be made towards your link popularity if the site that is linking to you has a closer topical relationship.
When considering your link options, keep in mind link popularity is all about increasing your authority and relevancy on a particular subject or topic that your site addresses.
Quantity of Sites
Generally speaking, the more links you have coming back to your site the better you will fare in search engines. It’s an assumption that falls line in with every other form of popularity: more is better when that’s what you’re trying to achieve. That doesn’t mean that the site with the largest number of back links is going to rank the highest in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages), though.
It’s easy to get caught in the game of trying to build as many links as possible. Remember that that’s not always the most effective way to go about establishing a web presence. A good rule of thumb to think of when deciding where to get links from is whether or not you would want that link if search engines didn’t exist. Keeping that in mind will help direct your focus on links from higher quality sites.
Establishing a Commendable Web Reputation
One of the greatest determining factors in establishing a web reputation is whether or not your site is comprehendible.
Make sure that the sites you’re linking with can be read easily, so that search engines can properly and effectively assess the value of the site linking to you. All too often, websites make their material difficult to link to. Static URLs work best for linking, but there are other options as well.
Creating widgets, tools, and copy-and-paste goodies that webmasters can easily insert into their own websites can generate valuable links over time. If your information is behind a login or on a dynamically generated URL it becomes less inviting for webmasters to link to.
Lastly, remember that it’s absolutely necessary for you to cover your own tracks when it comes to content. Websites with respected and long-tenured link popularity are reputable, dependable sources with a solid foundation of content. Putting the pieces into place to rank on search engines is much easier once you’ve established your website as an authority or unique source of information than if you’re working with weak material.