What is Link Popularity?

by Victor J. McCoy
3V Design Media.com

 Link popularity is used by a number of search engines to help measure the "weight" of a website. Weight can be measured by the number and quality of other websites that link to yours. Link popularity is an essential part of any search engine optimization strategy. Good quality links are necessary to achieve high search engine rankings, as they are an important factor that the search engines look for in reviewing a website.Links are like the gathering at a family reunion. There are many people there that are connected in some way to one of the  families represented . How they connect is the usual question, especially if someone in the family is famous - like a very popular website. A couple of high profile people in the group will add popularity to the group (family) and make others want to be around them. With link building you want to link to popular and valuable websites, not direct competition, but websites like one of your vendors.

When measuring link value  here are a few things to keep in mind.

1. Link to topic specific websites
2. Use Anchor Text to point to pages that have your keywords listed.
3. Link to highly trusted websites like, Universities, governments, non-profit organizations even local businesses that have a good reputation and have a level of marketing that is visible in the region.
4. Stay away from link neighborhoods that connect to spam sites. Check to see if they've linked to you without your knowledge somehow.
5. Continue adding "fresh" links periodically. The signal decays from those you selected years ago. Its like the search engines grow tired of looking at the same thing. Search engines recognize fresh links and considers that mean your site is still popular and you have "new friends" instead of just old friends.
6. Use social media to drive fresh visits to your website and request new links from those you drive to your website.