Why is increasing link popularity important when it comes to promoting your blog or website? Well, link popularity basically means that you have several people linking to your site. The more sites that link to your own, then the more popular your site is seen as being in the eyes of the search engines- particularly Google.

Understanding how Google works helps to some degree. Google has a very complex algorithm – and I don’t think anyone has managed to figure out exactly how it works, but people watching how Google works have come up with some pieces of the puzzle over time.

Of all the search engines Google tends to drive the most traffic to our websites. This is more than likely because it is one of the most popular search engines in use world wide.

Google looks at a websites on and off site factors in order to determine how the website should rank. Page Rank plays a part in how Google rates our sites, and page rank is basically how important Google thinks your page is on the internet as a whole. Page rank is not the be all and end all of Search engine optimization but some still consider it to be important even though it is much less important than it used to be.

What Google considers important these days is the links pointing to your site, what types of sources they come from and how many sites link to your own. Another part of Google’s algorithm that we’re still trying to understand is the quality of the page that the link is on relative your your website or the page that it’s directed to. By this we mean- is the site or page that links to your own similar in topic or genre to your own? We believe that Google considers this very important. Also -is the page a list of links, or is the link to your site contained within the text of the site.

So how do you get sites that are similar or complimentary to your own to link to you?

Some methods that people have used are to distribute press releases, purchase links from link brokers or to trade links with other websites. It’s said that the press release is the most effective way of increasing your link popularity but it can be difficult because the content of your press release or article must be interesting enough for others to want to write about your press release and thus your site.

Purchasing links is quick and easy but the links are usually listed on a page on a website and not within the text of the site so they don’t work quite as well. Also, Google apparently automatically removes the value of links when they are placed at the bottom of websites with a whole list of outbound links.

Trading links with other sites used to be the best method of gaining link popularity, and it can still be a very good method but you need to get links from sites with similar context as your own. Also, if your reciprocal link is on a page that lists a number of links it still won’t be of that much value. You need to try to exchange links with other sites in a manner that gets them to mention your site or pages of your site within an article on that site for the best value.

As has been said hundreds or thousands of times before the very best way to gain link popularity is to work on your sites content. Create content that makes people want to come back to your site for more.

It is also important that when other sites link to you that they use descriptive text in their links. For example if you are linking to a site don’t write something like xyz company is fantastic click here to visit the site, with the link text being click here. It would be far better to write out a descriptive sentence that is appropriate for the site and link to the word in the phrase that describes the site best. For example if xyz company sells bikes you might write “xyz company sells bikes and you can read articles on biking, and purchase bike accessories directly on the site” with a link to the work bike or bikes.

Related Reading:

SEO Made Simple: Strategies For Dominating The World's Largest Search Engine (Volume 1)

Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media)

SEO Warrior

SEO For 2010: Search Engine Optimization Secrets

Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Company's Web Site (2nd Edition)