Link Popularity Explained
By Shannan Hearne-Fortner
Posted Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Link popularity is becoming hard to understand. It is different for many different search engines. And the whole concept is still relatively new, in internet terms.
Let's look at three search engines that factor link popularity into their overall search term rankings.
AskJeeves.com and their new search engine, Teoma, consider what they term general popularity. They consider similar sites and then note whether they have one link coming in or multiple links coming in from other web sites. Higher consideration is given to web sites that have what AskJeeves deems more quality sites linking in rather than lower quality sites. Weight is also put on sites that appear to bear authority within their given content communities. Management of a portal site would be a great way to become a recognized leader in your knowledge content community. Ultimately, for good ranking, you must have recognized authority sites in your outgoing links; sites of quality content among your incoming links; and numerous sites with large amounts of links among them.
FAST, or All The Web, and Lycos which it powers each look at the quality of the sites you are linking to and that are linked to you. The integrity as well as the content of the sites within your link community are evaluated in the overall value given to your links.
Perhaps the search engine with the most weight given to link popularity is Google.com. Google has always attempted to use a human, or logical method to determine whether or not a site has value related to the particular keywords associated with the site.
Google goes at least one step farther than most search engines. Google evaluates the continuum of linking relationships within the internet. The links that come into your site an the links that come out of your site as well as the links which come into and go out from other web sites with data related to your web site. The links that make up this mix must be utilizing relevant keywords and be comprised of high quality websites.
To do your best to win this link popularity game, the following tips are good rules of thumb.
Do not link with sites just for the sake of having links.
Do not link with sites that are made up mostly of affiliate links.
Do not comprise your site mostly of affiliate links.
Do not link with any site without carefully looking at the content of the sites they are linked to.
Do not allow just anyone to link to your site.
Do keep a sitelifelong activity of setting up quality reciprical links.
Do continually explore the sites you are linked to.
Do continually explore the sites linked to you.
About the Author
Shannan Hearne-Fortner is the President and Wizard of (http://www.SuccessPromotions.com) Marketing Your e-Business Better through creative marketing and knowledge. Guerrilla Marketing. One-to-One Marketing. Relationship Marketing. Your Marketing.
