Link Popularity

Who links to your site? Why does it matter? Should you go for quantity or quality?

A link is a sign of trust. Links and content are the two key elements to your search visibility. You will need a variety of link types, but each link should represent a relationship.

Some links are undesirable as they come from “spammy neighborhoods”.

Where do you start? Here are some guidelines and ideas on how to approach linking:

  • Start with a keyword analysis
  • Choose the best traffic driving keywords and run a search, find out who’s ranking well for them.
  • Go to marketleap.com and use their link popularity checker put in your site address and compare to the 3 sites you’d most like to beat or compete with. The report will give you the number of Google recognized links and the number of Yahoo! recognized links. Those numbers are hyperlinks to the search result pages and will show you where those links are coming from.
  • Create a spreadsheet of all of the links you’d like to go after and try to get one a week or so. Categorize the links according to the list below, check page rank on each, and make sure the links are relevant to the content on your site.
  • Make sure links don’t just go to your home page. You should have relevant, linkable content on every page of your site. Find specific links for each page separately.

The kinds of links/relationships to go after are:

    Blogs – court influential bloggers in your industry, comment on their blogs, give them something in exchange for writing about your product or services.

    Social media – find out which on-line community or communities that suit(s) you. Join the fray!

    Directories – Yahoo and DMOZ are a must, and then find some directories that are specific to your industry. Check their page rank and prioritize your submissions accordingly.
    Local businesses – chambers of commerce, other businesses that sub-contract work to you or that are frequent users/purchasers of your goods or services. Offer to write a testimonial for another business whose products and services you are comfortable recommending and request that they allow a link back to your site.
    Links from .edu and .gov sites really help establish your authority, as the search engines trust them most. Is there some way you can provide a unique, perhaps a free service to a nearby college? Get creative! One of these links is worth several others!
    Newspaper, magazine articles and/or reviews of your product/services
    Lastly and oft’ overlooked, create internal links within your content.
    Make sure you have a site map, and if you have dynamic pages, create hard links to them within the sitemap.