Link Popularity Explained

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.